Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any pointand to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us.

It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.

It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master-the root, the branch, the fruits-the principles, the consequences.

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.