Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
religion
Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject.
charity christianity god kindness religion
Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery; in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.
christianity religion
Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives
This religion taught to her children what men have only been able to discover by their greatest knowledge.
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
men religion
When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.
atheism blaise pascal philosophy religion
If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.
faith reason religion
I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.
faith religion
There are only two kinds of people we can call reasonable: either those who serve God with their whole heart because they know him, or those who search after him with all their heart because they do not know him.
anti-religious catholicism christianity god inspirational philosophical philosophy religion religious spiritual
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
dogmatism religion
But as for those who live without knowing Him and without seeking Him... this religion obliges us always to regard them, so long as they are in this life, as capable of the grace which can enlighten them...
grace religion tso-life
...for those who bring to the task perfect sincerity and a real desire to meet with truth, those I hope will be satisfied and convinced of the proofs of a religion so divine, which I have here collected, and in which I have followed somewhat after this order...
order proof religion truth
Make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.
humannature men nature religion
Religion must so be the object and center to which all things tend, that whoever knows the principles of religion can give an explanation both of the whole nature of man in particular, and of the whole course of the world in general.
man nature principles religion
If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
religion uncertainty