To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

Deliberate virtue is never worth much: The virtue of feeling or habit is the thing.

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

I made the journey to knowledge like dogs who go for walks with their masters, a hundred times forward and backward over the same territory; and when I arrived I was tired.

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

God: personified incomprehensibility.