All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.

We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

Law, without force, is impotent.

You always admire what you really don't understand.

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.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.