Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.

It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!

If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would itself be venerable enough.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.

Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same.

We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.