When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.

If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.