WednesdayApr 22, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
Let us wager the gain and the loss is wagering that God is. Let us consider the two possibilities. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Hesitate not, then, to wager that He is.
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
Continuous eloquence wearies.
Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.
The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
Anything that is written to please the author is worthless.
All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.
It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.
The power of man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doings.
I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.
We are so presumptuous that we should like to be known all over the world, even by people who will only come when we are no more. Such is our vanity that the good opinion of half a dozen of the people around us gives us pleasure and satisfaction.
Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.
The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.
The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons.
Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it.
It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.
Our notion of symmetry is derived form the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in breadth only, not vertically nor in depth.
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter. Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pa eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
All mens miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.
We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us from seeing it.
Self is hateful.
Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.
Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. 'This man is a good mathematician,' someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. 'That one is a good soldier.' He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way.
Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire them.
Men despise religion; they hate it, and they fear it is true.
Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, because they want to comprehend at a glance and are not used to seeking for first principles. Those, on the other hand, who are accustomed to reason from first principles do not understand matters of feeling at all, because they look for first principles and are unable to comprehend at a glance.
Reason is the slow and tortuous method by which these who do not know the truth discover it. The heart has its own reason which reason does not know.
We arrive at truth, not by reason only, but also by the heart.
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.
When the passions become masters, they are vices.
Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.
However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
When we encounter a natural style we are always surprised and delighted, for we thought to see an author and found a man.
Men blaspheme what they do not know.
The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
There are two types of mind ... the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.
What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.
Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.,,, This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.
Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. Mental trouble was never known to arise from such quarters. Though they do not cost much yet they accomplish much. They make other people good natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.
Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.
Justice without strength is powerless; strength without justice is tyrannical.
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.
Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.
[I feel] engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me. I am terrified. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
Whoever would not die to preserve his honor would be infamous.
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.
The heart has reasons which the reason cannot understand.
The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing. (La coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point)
All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end.
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to Gods providence to lead him aright.
No soul of high estate can take pleasure in slander. It betrays a weakness.
If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.
'The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,' not of philosophers and scholars.
What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline; and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present? Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object - that is, God, Himself. He alone is man's veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such - even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature.
The excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win times the probability of winning it.
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.
Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only go so far, but faith has no limits.
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.
Early things must be known to be loved: divine things must be loved to be known.
To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man as the race is to a horse.
We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Cleopatra's nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.
If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ then we shall find a peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.
We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?
Words differently arranged have a different meaning and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.
Let no one say that I have said nothing new ... the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better.
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything in this world.
The last thing that we discover in writing a book is to know what to put at the beginning.
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
We sometimes learn more from the sight of evil than from An example of good; and it is well to accustom ourselves to profit by the evil which is so common, while that which is good is so rare.
If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter the whole history of the world would have been different.
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
We shall die alone.
Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image.
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
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 world is satisfied with words. Few appreciate the things beneath.
Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our Actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
Do you wish men to speak well of you? Then never speak well of yourself.
Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; But it is opinion that uses force.
If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.
Eloquence - The art of saying things in such a way that those to whom we speak may listen to them with pleasure.
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
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