No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

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

Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.

So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Therefore those who have known God, without knowing their wretchedness, have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.

I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.