When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.
It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.
The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
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!
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.
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.
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.
We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.
Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
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.