All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it isnecessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented.

Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.