On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at Court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room.

Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.

Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.

Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!

Not the zeal alone of those who seek Him proves God, but the blindness of those who seek Him not.

The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.