The Stoics say, "Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest." And that is not true. Others say, "Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in amusement." And this is not true. Illness comes. Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.

It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.

Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

Man governs himself more by impulse than reason