“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.”
Men“Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.”
God“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.”
Men“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“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
Truth“Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see it is above, not against them.”
Faith“Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.”
Nature“Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?”
Nature“Our nature consists in motion complete rest is death.”
Death“The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.”
Alone“Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.”
Sports“Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.”
Great“The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.”
Great“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.”
Faith“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”
Valentinesday“Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.”
Faith“The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.”
God“When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.”
Love“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“We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.”
Faith“The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.”
Men“Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.”
God