The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.

Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything.

Description of man: dependence, longing for independence, need.

All the good maxims which are in the world fail when applied to one's self.

The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.

The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

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.

A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.

I made this letter very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.

Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.

How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.