“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.”
Nature“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“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.”
Nature“Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.”
Strength“Imagination decides everything.”
Imagination“Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.”
Experience“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!”
Religion“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.”
Men“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
God“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“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
Men“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“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.”
Truth“Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.”
Change“He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.”
God“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“Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.”
God“The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.”
Death“Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.”
Great“Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth give him too much, the same.”
Truth“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”
Time“The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.”
Men