We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are

If you want people to think well of you, do not speak well of yourself

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, why now rather than then?

If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God