Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.

Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and naturally loves itself; and it gives itself to one or the other, and hardens itself against one or the other, as it chooses...it is the heart that feels God, not the reason; this is faith.