All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.

If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.

It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

All sorrow has its root in man's inability to sit quiet in a room by himself.

The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.