Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

What are our natural principles but principles of custom?