Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows not."

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

"I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." (Letter 16, 1657)"

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

"I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise."

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

"To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

"Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much."

"You always admire what you really don't understand."

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

"I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world."

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

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

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

"When one does not love too much, one does not love enough."

"Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical."

"To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize."

"The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first."

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

"It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth."

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

"We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others."

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

"Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism."

"Little things comfort us because little things distress us."

"The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men."

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

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

"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"

"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."

"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?"

"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others."

"To understand is to forgive."

"Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other."

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

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

"Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness."

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

"Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference..."

"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?"

"Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity."

"In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart."

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

"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth."

"By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world."

"Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything."

"Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death."

"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."

"Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."