The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart." - Blaise Pascal
The stream is always purer at its source.
Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes laughter, use laughter when they are together, by their resemblance.
Undoubtedly equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men has made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might--so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good.
Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.
Things are always at their best in their beginning.
Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.
We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?
Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
Curiosity is nothing more than vanity. More often than not we only seek knowledge to show it off.
Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.
We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.
L'homme n'est qu'un sujet plein d'erreur, naturelle et ineffa c° able sans la gra" ce. Man is nothing but a subject full of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace.
One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.
No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.
Too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the wherewithal to overpay our debts.
Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.
Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.
It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
Quelque e tendue d'esprit que l'on ait, l'on n'est capable que d'une grande passion. However vast a man's spirit, he is only capable of one great passion.
Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.
The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.
Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.
Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.
Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
From whence comes it that a cripple in body does not irritate us, and that a crippled mind enrages us? It is because a cripple sees that we go right, and a distorted mind says that it is we who go astray. But for that we should have more pity and less rage.
Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.
Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
What a difficult thing it is to ask someone's advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem.
Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.
Don't try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.
We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.
All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.
The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are notrue demonstrations.
That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.
All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Description of man: dependence, longing for independence, need.
Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.
Vanity is but the surface.
When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant.
It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.
Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations; for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object. Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.
Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere
I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.
Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.
The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.
Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
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.
We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.
Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.
If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.
