The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Imagination decides everything.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

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

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

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

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

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

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.