We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.

We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.

Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way.

Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we love can them. The saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.

The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.

The sweetness of glory is so great that, join it to what we will, even to death, we love it.