Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.

Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God.

All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.

Nothing is so conformable to reason as to disavow reason.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.

You gave me health that I might serve you; and so often I failed to use my good health in your service. Now you send me sickness in order to correct me Grant that, having ignored the things of spirit when my body was vigorous, I may now enjoy spiritual sweetness while my body groans with pain.