Knowledge is like a sphere, the greater its volume, the larger its contact with the unknown.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man...

To treat the living body as a mechanism was repugnant, and seemed even ludicrous, to Pascal.

Man infinitely surpasses man.

One of the principal reasons that diverts those who are entering upon this knowledge so much from the true path which they should follow, is the fancy that they take at the outset that good things are inaccessible, giving them the name great, lofty, elevated, sublime. This destroys everything. I would call them low, common, familiar: these names suit it better; I hate such inflated expressions.

The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.

I make no doubt... that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.

Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.