is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all we want.
How many kingdoms know nothing of us!
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.
Nothing more astonishes me than to see that men are not astonished at their own weakness. They act seriously, and every one follows his own mode of life, not because it is, as a fact, good to follow, being the custom, but as if each man knew certainly where are reason and justice. They find themselves constantly deceived, and by an amusing humility always imagine that the fault is in themselves, and not in the art which all profess to understand. But it is well there are so many of this kind of people in the world, who are not sceptics for the glory of scepticism, to show that man is thoroughly capable of the most extravagant opinions, because he is capable of believing that his weakness is not natural and inevitable, but that, on the contrary, his wisdom comes by nature.
Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics. If all were so, they would be wrong.
Two infinites, a mean. If we read too quickly or too slowly, we understand nothing.
Too much and too little wine. Give a man none, he cannot find truth, give him too much, the same.
Chance gives thoughts, and chance takes them away; there is no art for keeping or gaining them.
A thought has escaped me. I would write it down. I write instead, that it has escaped me.
In writing down my thought it now and then escapes me, but this reminds me of my weakness, which I constantly forget. This teaches me as much as my forgotten thought, for my whole study is to know my nothingness.
Are men so strong, as to be insensible to all which affects them? Let us try them in the loss of goods or honour. Ah! the charm is worked.
To fear death out of danger, and not in danger, for we must be men.
Sudden death is the only thing to fear, therefore confessors live in the houses of the great.
We know ourselves so little, that many think themselves near death when they are perfectly well, and many think themselves well when they are near death, since they do not feel the fever at hand, or the abscess about to form.
Why is my knowledge so restricted, or my height, or my life to a hundred years rather than to a thousand? What was nature's reason for giving me such length of days, and for choosing this number rather than another, in that infinity where there is no reason to choose one more than another, since none is preferable to another?
The nature of man is not always to go forward, it has its advances and retreats.
Fever has its hot and cold fits, and the cold proves as well as the hot how great is the force of the fever.
The inventions of men from age to age follow the same plan. It is the same with the goodness and the wickedness of the world in general.
Plerumque gratæ principibus vices.
The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his occasional efforts, but by his ordinary life.
Those great spiritual efforts to which the soul sometimes attains are things on which it takes no permanent hold. It leaps to them, not as to a throne, for ever, but only for an instant.
I do not admire the excess of a virtue as of valour, unless I see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who had exceeding valour and exceeding humanity, for otherwise we do not rise, but fall. Grandeur is not shown by being at one extremity, but in touching both at once, and filling the whole space between. But perhaps this is only a sudden motion of the soul from one to the other extreme, and in fact it is always at one point only, as when a firebrand is whirled. Be it so, but at least this marks the agility if not the magnitude of the soul.
We do not remain virtuous by our own power, but by the counterpoise of two opposite vices, we remain standing as between two contrary winds; take away one of these vices, we fall into the other.
When we would pursue the virtues to their extremes on either side, vices present themselves, which insinuate themselves insensibly there, in their insensible course towards the infinitely great, so that we lose ourselves in vices, and no longer see virtues.
It is not shameful to man to yield to pain, and it is shameful to yield to pleasure. This is not because pain comes from without us, while we seek pleasure, for we may seek pain, and yield to it willingly without this kind of baseness. How comes it then that reason finds it glorious in us to yield under the assaults of pain, and shameful to yield under the assaults of pleasure? It is because pain does not tempt and attract us. We ourselves choose it voluntarily, and will that it have dominion over us. We are thus masters of the situation, and so far man yields to himself, but in pleasure man yields to pleasure. Now only mastery and empire bring glory, and only slavery causes shame.
All things may prove fatal to us, even those made to serve us, as in nature walls may kill us and stairs may kill us, if we walk not aright.
The slightest movement affects all nature, the whole sea changes because of a rock. Thus in grace, the most trifling action has effect on everything by its consequences; therefore everything is important.
Provided we know each man's ruling passion we are sure of pleasing him; yet each man has his fancies, contrary to his real good, even in the very idea he forms of good; a strange fact which puts all out of tune.
When our passions lead us to any act we forget our duty. If we like a book we read it, when we should be doing something else. But as a reminder we ought to propose to ourselves to do something distasteful; we then excuse ourselves that we have something else to do, and thus remember our duty.
Sneezing absorbs all the faculties of the soul, as do certain bodily functions, but we do not draw therefrom the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is against his will. And if we make ourselves sneeze we do so against our will. It is not in view of the act itself, but for another end, and so it is not a mark of the weakness of man, and of his slavery to that act.
Scaramouch, who thinks of one thing only.
The doctor, who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has said all he has to say, so full is he of the desire of talking.
The parrot's beak, which he dries though it is clean already.
The sense of falseness in present pleasures, and our ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, are the causes of inconstancy.
He no longer loves the person he loved ten years ago. I can well believe it. She is no longer the same, nor is he. He was young, and so was she; she is quite different. He would perhaps love her still were she what she then was.
Reasons, seen from afar, appear to restrict our view, but not when we reach them; we begin to see beyond.
… We look at things not only from
