Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all.