1. ”All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.”
2. "All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone."
3. "All the principles of sceptics, stoics, atheists, etc., are true. But their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also true."
4. “A trifle consoles us because a trifle distresses us.”
5. "Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world."
6. “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?”
7. ”Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
8. “Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.”
9. “Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.”
10. "Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself."
11. “Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.”
12. “Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.”
13. ”Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.”
14. “Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.”
15. ”Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
16. "For, in fact, what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up."
17. ”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.”
18. ”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.”
19. ”[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.”
20. “I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still and quiet in a room alone.”
21. “I have made this a rather long letter because I haven't had time to make it shorter.”
22. “I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.”
23. "Imagination decides everything."
24. "Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything in this world."
25. “I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.”
26. “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.”
27. “I set it down as a fact that if all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. This is apparent from the quarrels which arise from the indiscreet tales told from time to time.”
28. “It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.”
29. ”It is not certain that everything is uncertain.”
30. “It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.”
31. “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.”
32. “Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.”
33. “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.”
34. ”Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live.”
35. ”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.”
36. “Little things console us because little things afflict us.”
37. “Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.”
38. "Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness."
39. “Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.”
40. ”Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.”
41. ”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.”
42. “Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.”
43. ”Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.”
44. “Men blaspheme what they do not know.”
45. “Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.”
46. "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
47. "Nature diversifies and imitates; art imitates and diversifies."
48. “Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image.”
49. ”Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.”
50. “Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”
51. "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."
52. “Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.”
53. ”Our notion of symmetry is derived form the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in breadth only, not vertically nor in depth.”
54. "People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found out by others."
55. ”Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.”
56. ”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.”
57. ”Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing."
58. “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
59. ”The excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win times the probability of winning it.”
60. "The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men."
61. “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.”
62. “The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way."
63. “The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it.”
64. ”The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.”
65. "The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble."
66. "There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous."
67. ”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.”
68. “There are truths on this side of the Pyranees, which are falsehoods on the other.”
69. ”The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”
70. ”The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.”
71. “Things are always at their best in their beginning.”
72. ”Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it.”
73. ”To deny, to believe, and to doubt well are to a man as the race is to a horse.”
74. "Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only."
75. “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.”
76. "Weariness.--Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair."
77. ”We arrive at truth, not by reason only, but also by the heart.”
78. “We conceal it from ourselves in vain-- we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.”
79. “We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we desire to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness or generosity or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence.”
80. “We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.”
81. "We like to be deceived."
82. “We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.”
83. "We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting."
84. ”We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us from seeing it.”
85. "We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses."
86. “What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a 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.”
87. “What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything 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.”
88. ”When all is equally agitated, nothing appears to be agitated, as in a ship. When all tend to debauchery, none appears to do so. He who stops draws attention to the excess of others, like a fixed point."
89. "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, why now rather than then."
90. ”When the passions become masters, they are vices.”
91. ”When we encounter a natural style we are always surprised and delighted, for we thought to see an author and found a man.”
92. "When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing."
93. ”Words differently arranged have a different meaning and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.”
