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Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988 [Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.

Commemoration of Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, 1099 What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline; and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present? Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object -- that is, God, Himself. He alone is man's veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such -- even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature.

Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; We do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ.

Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.

We like to be deceived.

The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

Force rules the world, and not opinion; but opinion is that which makes use of force.

Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.

man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Law, without force, is impotent.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.

A jester, a bad character.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.