Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.

How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all.

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

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.

The man who knows God but does not know his own misery, becomes proud. The man who knows his own misery but does not know God, ends in despair...the knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course because in him we find both God and our own misery. Jesus Christ is therefore a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.