"Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
"Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death."
"All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone."
"Le silence ´eternal de ces espace infins m’effraie. (The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.)"
"Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it."
"Nature has perfection, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image."
"Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts."
"People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."
"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable 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."
"We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything."
"We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others."
"When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing."
"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't."
"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways."
"Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless."
"The excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win times the probability of winning it."
"Things are always at their best in the beginning."
"Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never."
"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."
"I have made this a rather long letter because I haven't had time to make it shorter."
"The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it."
"It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power."
"We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves."
"Despite the sight of all the miseries which affect us and hold us by the throat we have an irrepressible instinct which bears us up."