Miracles enable us to judge doctrine, and doctrine enables us to judge miracles. - Blaise Pascal

No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth

Our imagination so magnifies the present, because we are continually thinking about it, and so reduces eternity, because we do not think about it, that we turn eternity into nothing and nothing into eternity, and all this is so strongly rooted within us that all our reason cannot save us from it.

We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard.