How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired. If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists. It is a strange and long war, the war that violence is forever waging against truth. All the efforts of violence are powerless to weaken truth, and serve only to make it stronger. All the lights of truth are powerless to stop violence, and serve only to make it angrier. Do not suppose, however, that the two are equal: there is one very great difference between them. The course of violence is directed by God who channels its effects to the exaltation of the truth it attacks; whereas truth subsists eternally and in the end triumphs over its enemies, for it is eternal and powerful as God himself. It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory. Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just. Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed. 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. Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master. When we disobey the latter we are punished, when we disobey the former we are fools. Curiosity is only in 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. There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe they are sinners, the sinners who believe they are righteous. | 
