Music is what I love to do; it’s in my veins.

When Thomas Edison Worked Late Into The Night On The Electric Light, He Had To Do It By Gas Lamp Or Candle. I’m Sure It Made The Work Seem That Much More Urgent.

Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.

Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.

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.

No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny.

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions…. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.

All our dignity lies in our thoughts.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.

Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.

Kind words produce their images on men’s souls.

Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.

Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he destroyed himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, in which he saved himself and the whole human race.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.

If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

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?

If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.

Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.

Faith is a gift of God.

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn’t find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of… We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.

No one is discontented at not being a king except a discrowned king … unhappiness almost invariably indicates the existence of a road not taken, a talent undeveloped, a self not recognized.

The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.

What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.

Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.

It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.

So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Therefore those who have known God, without knowing their wretchedness, have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves.

Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master-the root, the branch, the fruits-the principles, the consequences.

We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.

If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.

Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you.

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.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.

Wisdom leads us back to childhood.

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. The supreme achievement of reason is to realise that there is a limit to reason. Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realise that.

The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.

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.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true and then show that it is.

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.

Imagination decides everything.

There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition

All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.

The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.

What a vast difference there is between knowing God and loving Him.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.

Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.

Most of man’s trouble comes from his inability to be still.

Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

Man’s sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.

Look for the truth, it wants to be found.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

When intuition and logic agree, you are always right.

If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it’s possible, in everything.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

It’s not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It’s those who write the songs.

I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn’t than live as if he doesn’t exist to find out He does.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.

Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name!

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

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.

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.

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.

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.

Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man…?

Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.

The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.

Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.

In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

Either Christianity is true or it’s false. If you bet that it’s true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it IS true, you’ve gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it’s false, you’ve lost nothing, but you’ve had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it’s false, you’ve lost nothing. But if you bet that it’s false, and it turns out to be true, you’ve lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell.

Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Don’t try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.

If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.