Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.

It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it.

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

What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.

Since [man's] true nature has been lost, anything can become his nature: similarly, true good being lost, anything can become his true good.

There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God, and not [human] enemies, no other good but God, and not a rich land.

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