Fear not, provided you fear but if you fear not, then fear.

If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.

When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there... now instead of then.

Let us weigh the gain and the loss, in wagering that God is. Consider these alternatives: if you win, you win all, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then, to wager that he is.

We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.

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.

Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.