Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

I am in the utmost perplexity, yand have wished a hundred times, that if there is a A God, nature would manifest him without ambiguity, and that if there is not, every imaginary sign of his existence might vanish : in short, let nature speak distinctly, or be totally silent, and I shall know what course to take.

[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.

All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd.