The germs of all things are in every heart, and the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes are but different modes of ourselves.
Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.
To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All other subjects may be reduced to that; all other studies bring us back to this study.
Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, wants to re-establish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.
Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired.
The stationary condition is the beginning of the end
Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.
Faith is certitude without proofs ... Faith is a sentiment, for it is a hope; it is an instinct, for it precedes all outward instruction.
The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection.
Every life is a profession of faith.
When everything has its proper place in our minds, we are able to stand in equilibrium with the rest of the world.
If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and is lending oneself to the universal illusion without becoming its dupe.
Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.
I do not deny the rights of democracy, but I have no illusions as to the uses that will be made of those rights so long as wisdom is rare and pride abundant
To win true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, pardoned, and sustained by a supreme power, to feel himself in the right road, at the point where God would have him be - in order with God and the universe. This faith gives strength and calm.
The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith - that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind.
In order to see Christianity, one must forget all the Christians.
Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.
If man was what he ought to be, he would be adored by the animals.
Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.
Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium--an accident.
Common sense is calculation applied to life.
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