Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.
Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.
Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.
Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.
However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.
All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.
You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.
All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.
The sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room.
The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.
For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.
Jurisdiction is not given for the sake of the judge, but for that of the litigant.
Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.
We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.
Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.
All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.
If a soldier or labourer complain of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.
Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.
Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things beyond it.
Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.
All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.
Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss.
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Voluptuousness, like justice, is blind, but that is the only resemblance between them.
Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.
Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.
Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.
Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.
Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God.
Why God has instituted Prayer:— To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.
Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only go so far, but faith has no limits.
The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.