He who does not do so understands not the force of reason. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill.
Thought constitutes the greatness of man.
The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life. What astonishes me most is to see that all the world is not astonished at its own weakness. Men act seriously, and each follows his own mode of life, not because it is in fact good to follow since it is the custom, but as if each man knew certainly where reason and justice are. They find themselves continually deceived, and, by a comical humility, think it is their own fault and not that of the art which they claim always to possess. But it is well there are so many such people in the world, who are not sceptics for the glory of scepticism, in order to show that man is quite capable of the most extravagant opinions, since he is capable of believing that he is not in a state of natural and inevitable weakness, but, on the contrary, of natural wisdom.