239 Quotes by Blaise Pascal

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary. (Quote Meaning)

Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. (Meaning)

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

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first. (Meaning)

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others. (Quote Meaning)

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. (Meaning)

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. (Quote Meaning)

ELEVATE

Free Resource: Over 1000 smart goal ideas to inspire your life

Get Your Guide for FREE

There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.

Don't try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years. (Meaning)

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Either Christianity is true or it's false. If you bet that it's true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it IS true, you've gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it's false, you've lost nothing, but you've had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it's false, you've lost nothing. But if you bet that it's false, and it turns out to be true, you've lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell.

Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart. (Meaning)

Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much. (Quote Meaning)

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

ELEVATE

Free Resource: A step-by-step process for healthier social media use

Get Your Guide for FREE

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

Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. (Meaning)

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

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart. (Quote Meaning)

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. (Meaning)

Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.

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.

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

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed. (Meaning)

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. (Quote Meaning)

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.

It's not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It's those who write the songs.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true and then show that it is.

I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God.

I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

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.

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

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

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought. (Meaning)

What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart. (Quote Meaning)

We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.

Faith is a gift of God. (Meaning)

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

Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

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

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.

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

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it. (Quote Meaning)

We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.

If god does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.

You always admire what you really don't understand. (Meaning)

It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.

There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition

We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.

Chess is the gymnasium of the mind. (Meaning)

The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?

Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.

Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.

The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog. (Meaning)

The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny.

Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.

Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he destroyed himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, in which he saved himself and the whole human race.

There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man. (Meaning)

The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.

If ignorance were bliss, he'd be a blister

When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.

When intuition and logic agree, you are always right. (Meaning)

Most of man's trouble comes from his inability to be still.

No one is discontented at not being a king except a discrowned king.
unhappiness almost invariably indicates the existence of a road not taken, a talent undeveloped, a self not recognized.

The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master-the root, the branch, the fruits-the principles, the consequences.

Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.

Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

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.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.

If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing. (Meaning)

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand. (Meaning)

Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.

What a vast difference there is between knowing God and loving Him.

All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.

Imagination decides everything. (Meaning)

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

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.

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.

The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness--by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.

Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.

When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.

Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

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?

Kind words produce their images on men's souls.

Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. (Quote Meaning)

Continuous eloquence wearies.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain. (Meaning)

If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.

The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.

We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms. (Meaning)

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 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.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back. (Quote Meaning)

"The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from

another than from himself at different times."

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth. (Meaning)

Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.

The only shame is to have none. (Meaning)

Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere

Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering.

Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter. (Meaning)

Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.

There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.

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.

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

St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it's possible, in everything.

Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.

It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!

Little things console us because little things afflict us. (Meaning)

The man who knows God but does not know his own misery, becomes proud. The man who knows his own misery but does not know God, ends in despair...the knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course because in him we find both God and our own misery. Jesus Christ is therefore a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.

There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. (Quote Meaning)

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.

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.

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.

A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of if is generally right on this side,--and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case.

Eloquence is a way of saying things in such a way, first, that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure, and second, that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.

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

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

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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

Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

Look for the truth, it wants to be found.

Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.

There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. The supreme achievement of reason is to realise that there is a limit to reason. Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realise that.

And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?

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

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical. (Meaning)

There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.

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.

God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind.

The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.

We like to be deceived.

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of his soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair.

The property of power is to protect.

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.

Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable.

Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.

Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first.

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

No one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

To understand is to forgive. (Meaning)

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!

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

Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.

Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we love can them. The saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.

Vanity is but the surface.

Wisdom leads us back to childhood.

All our dignity lies in our thoughts.

Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.

What amazes me most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness.

If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God

Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.

For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.

The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.

We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.

How can anyone lose who chooses to become a Christian? If, when he dies, there turns out to be no God and his faith was in vain, he has lost nothing...If, however, there is a God and a heaven and a hell. then he has gained heaven and his skeptical friends have lost everything.

Great and small suffer the same mishaps.

Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.

We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.

Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.

Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.

What a difficult thing it is to ask someone's advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem.

Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only go so far, but faith has no limits.

If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.

We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.

Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it

No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.

What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial.

We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.

One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.

Man governs himself more by impulse than reason

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.

"Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things

beyond it."

Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.

If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.

How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!