“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.", 1657)”

“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”

“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.”

“When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowin...”

“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”

“It is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting.”

“Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholars...”

“The sciences were financially supported, honoured everywhere, universally pursued; they were like tall edifices supported by strong foundations. Then the Christian religion appeared in Byzantium an...”

“If your arteries are good, eat more ice cream. If they are bad, drink more red wine. Proceed thusly.”

“The love of all people except the French people, is deep in the mind of the great doctors of the French Republic.”

“With heart at rest I climbed the citadel'sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, pa...”

“I have little use for religion as it is practiced, or for astrology, or for belief in witchcraft or omens of good or ill-luck. I think they all stem from some insufficiency in mens minds, perhaps f...”

“It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent.”

“So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in - at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives deligh...”