 The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy. |
| The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. |
| Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. |
| I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute. |
| The gospel to me is simply irresistible. |
| When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before. |
| Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature. |
| Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree. |
| It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants. |
| Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back. |
| Vanity is but the surface. |
| Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately. |
| You always admire what you really don't understand. |
| The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble. |
| Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same. |
| Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness. |
| If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. |
| Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way. |
| There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him. |
| The only shame is to have none. |
