By knowing each mans ruling passion, we are sure of pleasing him; and — Pensées

"La vraie éloquence se moque de léloquence, la vraie morale se moque de la morale."

"...no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true."

"There are then two kinds of intellect: the one able to penetrate acutely and deeply into the conclusions of given premises, and this is the precise intellect; the other able to comprehend a great number of premises without confusing them, and this is the mathematical intellect. The one has force and exactness, the other comprehension. Now the one quality can exist without the other; the intellect can be strong and narrow, and can also be comprehensive and weak."

"...it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect."

"Se moquer de la philosophie, cest vraiment philosopher"

"Scepticism.—I shall here write my thoughts without order, and not perhaps in unintentional confusion; that is the true order, which will always indicate my object by its very disorder. I should do too much honor to my subject, if I treated it with order, since I want to show that it is incapable of it."