There is no denying it; one must admit that there is something astonishing about Christianity. 'It is because you were born in it,' they will say. Fa… - Blaise Pascal

If it is pleasing to observe in nature her desire to paint God in all his works, in which we see some traces of him because they are his images, how much more just is it to consider in the productions of minds the efforts which they make to imitate the essential truth, even in shunning it, and to remark wherein they attain it and wherein they wander from it, as I have endeavored to do in this study.

Anyone who wants to know the full extent of man's vanity has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a je ne sais quoi. (Corneille.) And its effects are terrifying. This indefinable something, so trifling that we cannot recognize it, upsets the whole earth, princes, armies, the entire world.

Nie betrieben die Menschen das Böse so umfassend und freudig wie aus religiöser Überzeugung.