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All The Excesses, All The Violence, And All The Vanity Of Great Men, Come From The Fact That They Know Not What They Are: It Being Difficult For Those Who Regard Themselves At Heart As Equal With All Men... For This It Is Necessary For One To Forget Himself, And To Believe That He Has Some Real Excellence Above Them, In Which Consists This Illusion That I Am Endeavoring To Discover To You.

-Blaise Pascal

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All The Excesses, All

Blaise Pascal

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All The Excesses, All The Violence, And All The Vanity Of Great Men, Come From The Fact That They Know Not What They Are: It Being Difficult For Those Who Regard Themselves At Heart As Equal With All Men... For This It Is Necessary For One To Forget Himself, And To Believe That He Has Some Real Excellence Above Them, In Which Consists This Illusion That I Am Endeavoring To Discover To You.

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Law Was Once Introduced Without Reason, And Has Become Reasonable.

Anyone Who Found The Secret Of Rejoicing When Things Go Well Without Being Annoyed When They Go Badly Would Have Found The Point.

When We Are In Love We Seem To Ourselves Quite Different From What We Were Before.

Inspirational Life

It Is Dangerous To Explain Too Clearly To Man How Like He Is To The Animals Without Pointing Out His Greatness. It Is Also Dangerous To Make Too Much Of His Greatness Without His Vileness. It Is Still More Dangerous To Leave Him In Ignorance Of Both, But It Is Most Valuable To Represent Both To Him. Man Must Not Be Allowed To Believe That He Is Equal Either To Animals Or To Angels, Nor To Be Unaware Of Either, But He Must Know Both.

To Ridicule Philosophy Is Truly Philosophical. [fr., Se Moquer De La Philosophie C'est Vraiment Philosophe.]

The World Is Ruled By Force, Not By Opinion; But Opinion Uses Force.

The Present Is Never The Mark Of Our Designs. We Use Both Past And Present As Our Means And Instruments, But The Future Only As Our Object And Aim.

Our Notion Of Symmetry Is Derived Form The Human Face. Hence, We Demand Symmetry Horizontally And In Breadth Only, Not Vertically Nor In Depth.

All Of Our Miseries Prove Our Greatness. They Are The Miseries Of A Dethroned Monarch.

Let Each Of Us Examine His Thoughts

Instead Of Complaining That God Had Hidden Himself, You Will Give Him Thanks For Having Revealed So Much Of Himself.

What Are Our Natural Principles But Principles Of Custom?

Once Your Soul Has Been Enlarged By A Truth, It Can Never Return To Its Original Size.

In Faith There Is Enough Light For Those Who Want To Believe And Enough Shadows To Blind Those Who Don't.

The Heart Has Its Reasons Of Which Reason Knows Nothing. We Feel It In A Thousand Things. I Say That The Heart Naturally Loves The Universal Being, And Naturally Loves Itself; And It Gives Itself To One Or The Other, And Hardens Itself Against One Or The Other, As It Chooses...it Is The Heart That Feels God, Not The Reason; This Is Faith.

We Must Kill Them In War, Just Because They Live Beyond The River. If They Lived On This Side, We Would Be Called Murderers.

A Few Rules Include All That Is Necessary For The Perfection Of The Definitions, The Axioms, And The Demonstrations, And Consequently Of The Entire Method Of The Geometrical Proofs Of The Art Of Persuading.

If Magistrates Had True Justice, And If Physicians Had The True Art Of Healing, They Would Have No Occasion For Square Caps; The Majesty Of These Sciences Would Itself Be Venerable Enough.

Reflect On Death As In Jesus Christ, Not As Without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ It Is Dreadful, It Is Alarming, It Is The Terror Of Nature. In Jesus Christ It Is Fair And Lovely, It Is Good And Holy, It Is The Joy Of Saints.

Flies Are So Mighty That They Win Battles, Paralyse Our Minds, Eat Up Our Bodies.

If Man Were Happy, He Would Be The More So, The Less He Was Diverted, Like The Saints And God.

If We Dreamed The Same Thing Every Night, It Would Affect Us Much As The Objects We See Every Day. And If A Common Workman Were Sure To Dream Every Night For Twelve Hours That He Was A King, I Believe He Would Be Almost As Happy As A King Who Should Dream Every Night For Twelve Hours On End That He Was A Common Workman.

Passion Cannot Be Beautiful Without Excess; One Either Loves Too Much Or Not Enough.

I Can Approve Of Those Only Who Seek In Tears For Happiness.

It Is Not In Montaigne, But In Myself, That I Find All That I See In Him.

We Must Know Where To Doubt, Where To Feel Certain, Where To Submit. He Who Does Not Do So, Understands Not The Force Of Reason.

Those Whom We Call Ancient Were Really New In All Things, And Properly Constituted The Infancy Of Mankind.

Don't Try To Add More Years To Your Life. Better Add More Life To Your Years.

All Man's Troubles Come From Not Knowing How To Sit Still In One Room.

You Are In The Same Manner Surrounded With A Small Circle Of Persons... Full Of Desire. They Demand Of You The Benefits Of Desire... You Are Therefore Properly The King Of Desire. ...equal In This To The Greatest Kings Of The Earth... It Is Desire That Constitutes Their Power; That Is, The Possession Of Things That Men Covet.

The Church Limits Her Sacramental Services To The Faithful. Christ Gave Himself Upon The Cross A Ransom For All.

The Last Act Is Bloody, However Pleasant All The Rest Of The Play Is: A Little Earth Is Thrown At Last Upon Our Head, And That Is The End Forever.

God Is, Or He Is Not." But To Which Side Shall We Incline? Reason Can Decide Nothing Here. There Is An Infinite Chaos Which Separated Us. A Game Is Being Played At The Extremity Of This Infinite Distance Where Heads Or Tails Will Turn Up. What Will You Wager?

We Desire Truth, And Find Within Ourselves Only Uncertainty. We Seek Happiness, And Find Only Misery And Death. We Cannot But Desire Truth And Happiness, And Are Incapable Of Certainty Or Happiness.

We Only Consult The Ear Because The Heart Is Wanting.

We Do Not Rest Satisfied With The Present.... So Imprudent We Are That We Wander In The Times Which Are Not Ours And Do Not Thinkof The Only One Which Belongs To Us; And So Idle Are We That We Dream Of Those Times Which Are No More And Thoughtlessly Overlook That Which Alone Exists. For The Present Is Generally Painful To Us.

Imagination Decides Everything.

The Multitude Which Does Not Reduce Itself To Unity Is Confusion.

The Least Movement Is Of Importance To All Nature. The Entire Ocean Is Affected By A Pebble.

Faith Is Different From Proof; The Latter Is Human, The Former Is A Gift From God.

To Doubt Is A Misfortune, But To Seek When In Doubt Is An Indispensable Duty. So He Who Doubts And Seeks Not Is At Once Unfortunate And Unfair.

There Is A God-shaped Vacuum In Every Heart.

Il Y A Deux Sortes D'esprits, L'un Ge Ome Trique, Et L'autre Que L'on Peut Appeler De Finesse. Le Premier A Des Vues Lentes, Dures Et Inflexibles; Mais Le Dernier A Une Souplesse De Pense E. There Are Two Kinds Of Mind, One Mathematical, The Other What One Might Call The Intuitive. The First Takes A Slow, Firm, Inflexible View, But The Latter Has Flexibility Of Thought.

Nature Is An Infinite Sphere Of Which The Center Is Everywhere And The Circumference Nowhere.

Who Dispenses Reputation? Who Makes Us Respect And Revere Persons, Works, Laws, The Great? Who But This Faculty Of Imagination? All The Riches Of The Earth Are Inadequate Without Its Approval.

Justice Without Force Is Powerless; Force Without Justice Is Tyrannical.

Extremes Are For Us As Though They Were Not, And We Are Not Within Their Notice. They Escape Us, Or We Them. This Is Our True State; This Is What Makes Us Incapable Of Certain Knowledge And Of Absolute Ignorance... This Is Our Natural Condition, And Yet Most Contrary To Our Inclination; We Burn With Desire To Find Solid Ground And An Ultimate Sure Foundation Whereon To Build A Tower Reaching To The Infinite. But Our Whole Groundwork Cracks, And The Earth Opens To Abysses.

The Statements Of Atheists Ought To Be Perfectly Clear Of Doubt. Now It Is Not Perfectly Clear That The Soul Is Material.

For As Old Age Is That Period Of Life Most Remote From Infancy, Who Does Not See That Old Age In This Universal Man Ought Not To Be Sought In The Times Nearest His Birth, But In Those Most Remote From It?

To Find Recreation In Amusements Is Not Happiness; For This Joy Springs From Alien And Extrinsic Sources, And Is Therefore Dependent Upon And Subject To Interruption By A Thousand Accidents, Which May Minister Inevitable Affliction.

The Knowledge Of God Is Very Far From The Love Of Him.

Il Est Non Seulement Impossible, Mais Inutile De Conna|"tre Dieu Sans Je Sus-christ. It Is Not Only Impossible, But Also Useless To Recognize God Without Jesus.

The Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Frightens Me.

Truth Is So Obscure In These Times, And Falsehood So Established, That, Unless We Love The Truth, We Cannot Know It.

Excuse Me, Pray." Without That Excuse I Would Not Have Known There Was Anything Amiss.

By Space The Universe Encompasses And Swallows Me Up Like An Atom; By Thought I Comprehend The World.

We Run Carelessly To The Precipice, After We Have Put Something Before Us To Prevent Us Seeing It.

We Sail Within A Vast Sphere, Ever Drifting In Uncertainty, Driven From End To End. When We Think To Attach Ourselves To Any Pointand To Fasten To It, It Wavers And Leaves Us; And If We Follow It, It Eludes Our Grasp, Slips Past Us, And Vanishes For Ever. Nothing Stays For Us.

If You Want To Be A Real Seeker Of Truth, You Need To, At Least Once In Your Lifetime, Doubt In, As Much As It's Possible, In Everything.

It Is Not Permitted To The Most Equitable Of Men To Be A Judge In His Own Cause.

No Soul Of High Estate Can Take Pleasure In Slander. It Betrays A Weakness.

Those Are Weaklings Who Know The Truth And Uphold It As Long As It Suits Their Purpose, And Then Abandon It.

It Is The Conduct Of God, Who Disposes All Things Kindly, To Put Religion Into The Mind By Reason, And Into The Heart By Grace.

If There Were Only One Religion, God Would Indeed Be Manifest.

The Art Of Subversion, Of Revolution, Is To Dislodge Established Customs By Probing Down To Their Origins In Order To Show How They Lack Authority And Justice.

Symmetry Is What We See At A Glance; Based On The Fact That There Is No Reason For Any Difference.

Small Minds Are Concerned With The Extraordinary, Great Minds With The Ordinary.

Ordinary Extraordinary

Jesus Christ Came To Tell Men That They Have No Enemies But Themselves.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

Extremes Are For Us As If They Were Not, And As If We Were Not In Regard To Them; They Escape From Us, Or We From Them.

The War Existing Between The Senses And Reason.

According To The Doctrine Of Chance, You Ought To Put Yourself To The Trouble Of Searching For The Truth; For If You Die Without Worshiping The True Cause, You Are Lost. "but," Say You, "if He Had Wished Me To Worship Him, He Would Have Left Me Signs Of His Will." He Has Done So; But You Neglect Them. Seek Them, Therefore; It Is Well Worth It.

Silence. All Human Unhappiness Comes From Not Knowing How To Stay Quietly In A Room.

Continuous Eloquence Is Tedious.

The Strength Of A Man's Virtue Should Not Be Measured By His Special Exertions, But By His Habitual Acts.

One Of The Greatest Artifices The Devil Uses To Engage Men In Vice And Debauchery, Is To Fasten Names Of Contempt On Certain Virtues, And Thus Fill Weak Souls With A Foolish Fear Of Passing For Scrupulous, Should They Desire To Put Them In Practice.

It Is Man's Natural Sickness To Believe That He Possesses The Truth.

How Vain Is Painting, Which Is Admired For Reproducing The Likeness Of Things Whose Originals Are Not Admired.

Some Vices Only Lay Hold Of Us By Means Of Others, And These, Like Branches, Fall On Removal Of The Trunk.

To Deny, To Believe, And To Doubt Well, Are To A Man What The Race Is To A Horse.

There Should Be In Eloquence That Which Is Pleasing And That Which Is Real; But That Which Is Pleasing Should Itself Be Real.

Now, If The Passions Had No Hold On Us, A Week And A Hundred Years Would Amount To The Same.

Man's Greatness Lies In His Power Of Thought.

Who Can Doubt That We Exist Only To Love? Disguise It, In Fact, As We Will, We Love Without Intermission... We Live Not A Moment Exempt From Its Influence.

Eloquence Is The Painting Of Thought.

Men Seek Rest In A Struggle Against Difficulties; And When They Have Conquered These, Rest Becomes Insufferable.

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.

All Men Are Almost Led To Believe Not Of Proof, But By Attraction. This Way Is Base, Ignoble, And Irrelevant; Every One Therefore Disavows It. Each One Professes To Believe And Even To Love Nothing But What He Knows To Be Worthy Of Belief And Love.

All Men Have Happiness As Their Object: There Is No Exception. However Different The Means They Employ, They All Aim At The Same End.

Our True Dignity Consists — In Thought. Thence We Must Derive Our Elevation, Not From Space Or Duration. Let Us Endeavor Then To Think Well; This Is The Principle Of Morals.

Noble Deeds That Are Concealed Are Most Esteemed.

Deeds And Words

There Are Two Excesses: To Exclude Reason, To Admit Nothing But Reason. The Supreme Achievement Of Reason Is To Realise That There Is A Limit To Reason. Reason's Last Step Is The Recognition That There Are An Infinite Number Of Things Which Are Beyond It. It Is Merely Feeble If It Does Not Go As Far As To Realise That.

Description Of Man: Dependence, Longing For Independence, Need.

[christianity] Endeavors Equally To Establish These Two Things: That God Has Set Up In The Church Visible Signs To Make Himself Known To Those Who Should Seek Him Sincerely, And That He Has Nevertheless So Disguised Them That He Will Only Be Perceived By Those Who Seek Him With All Their Heart.

Faith Embraces Many Truths Which Seem To Contradict Each Other.

The Christian's God Does Not Merely Consist Of A God Who Is The Author Of Mathematical Truths And The Order Of The Elements. The God Of Abraham, The God Of Isaac, The God Of Jacob, The God Of The Christians, Is A God Of Love And Consolation.

Each One Is All In All To Himself; For Being Dead, All Is Dead To Him.

Nature Confuses The Skeptics And Reason Confutes The Dogmatists

What A Chimera Then Is Man. What A Novelty! What A Monster... What A Contradiction, What A Prodigy

Muhammad Established A Religion By Putting His Enemies To Death; Jesus Christ By Commanding His Followers To Lay Down Their Lives.

We Have An Idea Of Truth, Invincible To All Scepticism.

In Each Action We Must Look Beyond The Action At Our Past, Present, And Future State, And At Others Whom It Affects, And See The Relations Of All Those Things. And Then We Shall Be Very Cautious.

The Imagination Disposes Of Everything. It Creates Beauty, Justice, And Happiness, Which Are The Whole Of The World.

People Almost Invariably Arrive At Their Beliefs Not On The Basis Of Proof But On The Basis Of What They Find Attractive.

Force Rules The World-not Opinion; But It Is Opinion That Makes Use Of Force.

Admiration Spoils All From Infancy.

We Run Heedlessly Into The Abyss After Putting Something In Front Of Us To Stop Us From Seeing It.

All Human Evil Comes From A Single Cause, Man's Inability To Sit Still In A Room.

We Must Make Good People Wish That The Christian Faith Were True, And Then Show That It Is.

The Imagination Enlarges Little Objects So As To Fill Our Souls With A Fantastic Estimate; And, With Rash Insolence, It Belittles The Great To Its Own Measure, As When Talking Of God.

A Town, A Landscape Are When Seen From Afar A Town And A Landscape; But As One Gets Nearer, There Are Houses, Trees, Tiles Leaves, Grasses, Ants, Legs Of Ants And So On To Infinity. All This Is Subsumed Under The Name Of Landscape.

Custom Determines What Is Agreeable.

What Amazes Me Most Is To See That Everyone Is Not Amazed At His Own Weakness.

Nature, Which Alone Is Good, Is Wholly Familiar And Common.

Continuous Eloquence Wearies. Grandeur Must Be Abandoned To Be Appreciated. Continuity In Everything Is Unpleasant. Cold Is Agreeable, That We May Get Warm.

Things Are Always At Their Best In Their Beginning.

To Speak Freely Of Mathematics, I Find It The Highest Exercise Of The Spirit; But At The Same Time I Know That It Is So Useless That I Make Little Distinction Between A Man Who Is Only A Mathematician And A Common Artisan. Also, I Call It The Most Beautiful Profession In The World; But It Is Only A Profession.

If A Man Is Not Made For God, Why Is He Happy Only In God?

Nobody Is Publicly Accepted As An Expert On Poetry Unless He Displays The Sign Of Poet, Mathematician, Etc., But Universal Men Want No Sign And Make Hardly Any Distinction Between The Crafts Of Poet And Embroiderer. Universal Men Are Not Called Poets Or Mathematicians, Etc. But They Are All These Things And Judges Of Them Too. No One Could Guess What They Are, And They Will Talk About Whatever Was Being Talked About When They Came In. One Quality Is Not More Noticeable In Them Than Another, Unless It Becomes Necessary To Put It Into Practice, And Then We Remember It.

Is It Courage In A Dying Man To Go, In Weakness And In Agony, To Affront An Almighty And Eternal God?

Time Heals Griefs And Quarrels, For We Change And Are No Longer The Same Persons. Neither The Offender Nor The Offended Are Any More Themselves.

It Is Your Own Assent To Yourself, And The Constant Voice Of Your Own Reason, And Not Of Others, That Should Make You Believe.

That A Religion May Be True, It Must Have Knowledge Of Our Nature.

Man Is So Made That If He Is Told Often Enough That He Is A Fool He Believes It.

Why God Has Instituted Prayer:— To Communicate To His Creatures The Dignity Of Causation.

Meanings Receive Their Dignity From Words Instead Of Giving It To Them.

Let It Not Be Imagined That The Life Of A Good Christian Must Be A Life Of Melancholy And Gloominess; For He Only Resigns Some Pleasures To Enjoy Others Infinitely Better.

Man's Grandeur Is That He Knows Himself To Be Miserable.

Imagination Is The Deceptive Part In Man, The Mistress Of Error And Falsehood.

Continuous Eloquence Wearies.

Faith Is A Sounder Guide Than Reason. Reason Can Only Go So Far, But Faith Has No Limits.

We Never Love A Person, But Only Qualities.

The Gist Is That Good And Evil Are Foreordained. What Is Foreordained Comes Necessarily To Be After A Prior Act Of Divine Volition...rather, Everything Small And Large Is Written And Comes To Be In A Known And Expected Measure.

Men Are So Completely Fools By Necessity That He Is But A Fool In A Higher Strain Of Folly Who Does Not Confess His Foolishness.

How I Hate This Folly Of Not Believing In The Eucharist, Etc.! If The Gospel Be True, If Jesus Christ Be God, What Difficulty Is There?

All Err The More Dangerously Because Each Follows A Truth. Their Mistake Lies Not In Following A Falsehood But In Not Following Another Truth.

Since We Cannot Know All That There Is To Be Known About Anything, We Ought To Know A Little About Everything.

Je Ne Crois Que Les Histoires Dont Les Te Moins Se Feraient E Gorger. I Only Believe In Histories Told By Witnesses Who Would Have Had Their Throats Slit.

Seeing Too Much To Deny And Too Little To Be Sure, I Am In A State To Be Pitied.

Habit Is A Second Nature, Which Destroys The First.

Man's True Nature Being Lost, Everything Becomes His Nature; As, His True Good Being Lost, Everything Becomes His Good.

Lost Friendship

Lost Everything

Those Who Make Antitheses By Forcing The Sense Are Like Men Who Make False Windows For The Sake Of Symmetry. Their Rule Is Not To Speak Justly, But To Make Accurate Figures.

All Evil Stems From This-that We Do. Know How To Handle Your Solitude.

Undoubtedly Equality Of Goods Is Just; But, Being Unable To Cause Might To Obey Justice, Men Has Made It Just To Obey Might. Unable To Strengthen Justice, They Have Justified Might--so That The Just And The Strong Should Unite, And There Should Be Peace, Which Is The Sovereign Good.

Do They Think That They Have Given Us Great Pleasure By Telling Us That They Hold Our Soul To Be No More Than Wind Or Smoke, And Saying It Moreover In Tones Of Pride And Satisfaction? Is This Then Something To Be Said Gaily? Is It Not On The Contrary Something To Be Said Sadly, As Being The Saddest Thing In The World?

L'on A Beau Se Cacher A' Soi-me" Me, L'on Aime Toujours. We Vainly Conceal From Ourselves The Fact That We Are Always In Love.

A Mere Trifle Consoles Us, For A Mere Trifle Distresses Us.

The Sole Cause Of Man's Unhappiness Is That He Does Not Know How To Stay Quietly In His Room.

Few Friendships Would Survive If Each One Knew What His Friend Says Of Him Behind His Back.

If Men Knew Themselves, God Would Heal And Pardon Them.

I Have Spent Much Time In The Study Of The Abstract Sciences; But The Paucity Of Persons With Whom You Can Communicate On Such Subjects Disgusted Me With Them. When I Began To Study Man, I Saw That These Abstract Sciences Are Not Suited To Him, And That In Diving Into Them, I Wandered Farther From My Real Object Than Those Who Knew Them Not, And I Forgave Them For Not Having Attended To These Things. I Expected Then, However, That I Should Find Some Companions In The Study Of Man, Since It Was So Specifically A Duty. I Was In Error. There Are Fewer Students Of Man Than Of Geometry.

There Are People Who Lie Simply For The Sake Of Lying.

Pride Counterbalances All Our Miseries, For It Either Hides Them, Or, If It Discloses Them, Boasts Of That Disclosure. Pride Has Such A Thorough Possession Of Us, Even In The Midst Of Our Miseries And Faults, That We Are Prepared To Sacrifice Life With Joy, If It May But Be Talked Of.

Lord, Help Me To Do Great Things As Though They Were Little, Since I Do Them With Your Power; And Little Things As Though They Were Great, Since I Do Them In Your Name!

To Have No Time For Philosophy Is To Be A True Philosopher.

The Only Thing Which Consoles For Our Miseries Is Diversion, And Yet This Is The Greatest Of Our Miseries. For It Is This Which Principally Hinders Us From Reflecting Upon Ourselves And Which Makes Us Imperceptibly Ruin Ourselves.

Reflecting Upon

Tout Notre Raisonnement Se Re Duit A' Ce Der Au Sentiment. All Our Reasoning Comes Down To Surrendering To Feeling.

You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand.

Fashion Is A Tyrant From Which Nothing Frees Us. We Must Suit Ourselves To Its Fantastic Tastes. But Being Compelled To Live Under Its Foolish Laws, The Wise Man Is Never The First To Follow, Nor The Last To Keep It.

There Are Three Means Of Believing--by Inspiration, By Reason, And By Custom. Christianity, Which Is The Only Rational Institution, Does Yet Admit None For Its Sons Who Do Not Believe By Inspiration. Nor Does It Injure Reason Or Custom, Or Debar Them Of Their Proper Force; On The Contrary, It Directs Us To Open Our Minds By The Proofs Of The Former, And To Confirm Our Minds By The Authority Of The Latter.

Il N'est Pas Certain Que Tout Soit Incertain. (translation: It Is Not Certain That Everything Is Uncertain.)

It Is Natural For The Mind To Believe And For The Will To Love; So That, For Want Of True Objects, They Must Attach Themselves To False.

Do You Wish People To Think Well Of You? Don't Speak Well Of Yourself.

Just As All Things Speak About God To Those That Know Him, And Reveal Him To Those That Love Him, They Also Hide Him From All Those That Neither Seek Nor Know Him.

The Manner In Which Epictetus, Montaigne, And Salomon De Tultie Wrote, Is The Most Usual, The Most Suggestive, The Most Remembered, And The Oftener Quoted; Because It Is Entirely Composed Of Thoughts Born From The Common Talk Of Life.

Christian Piety Annihilates The Egoism Of The Heart; Worldly Politeness Veils And Represses It.

It Is Good To Be Tired And Wearied By The Futile Search After The True Good, That We May Stretch Out Our Arms To The Redeemer.

Those Honor Nature Well, Who Teach That She Can Speak On Everything...

Losses Are Comparative; Imagination Only Makes Them Of Any Moment.

You Corrupt Religion Either In Favour Of Your Friends, Or Against Your Enemies.

If God Does Not Exist, One Loses Nothing By Believing In Him Anyway, While If He Does Exist, One Stands To Lose Everything By Not Believing.

We Are Fools To Depend Upon The Society Of Our Fellow-men. Wretched As We Are, Powerless As We Are, They Will Not Aid Us; We Shall Die Alone.

Justice And Truth Are Two Such Subtle Points, That Our Tools Are Too Blunt To Touch Them Accurately.

The Mind Has Its Arrangement; It Proceeds From Principles To Demonstrations. The Heart Has A Different Mode Of Proceeding.

There Are Two Types Of Mind . . . The Mathematical, And What Might Be Called The Intuitive. The Former Arrives At Its Views Slowly, But They Are Firm And Rigid; The Latter Is Endowed With Greater Flexibility And Applies Itself Simultaneously To The Diverse Lovable Parts Of That Which It Loves.

(man,) The Glory And The Scandal Of The Universe.

Beauty Is A Harmonious Relation Between Something In Our Nature And The Quality Of The Object Which Delights Us.

In Difficult Times Carry Something Beautiful In Your Heart.

Difficult Times

Apart From Jesus Christ, We Do Not Know What Is Our Life, Nor Our Death, Nor God, Nor Ourselves.

The Struggle Alone Pleases Us, Not The Victory.

All The Good Maxims Which Are In The World Fail When Applied To One's Self.

I Would Inquire Of Reasonable Persons Whether This Principle: Matter Is Naturally Wholly Incapable Of Thought, And This Other: I Think, Therefore I Am, Are In Fact The Same In The Mind Of Descartes, And In That Of St. Augustine, Who Said The Same Thing Twelve Hundred Years Before.

Those Who Are Accustomed To Judge By Feeling Do Not Understand The Process Of Reasoning, Because They Want To Comprehend At A Glance And Are Not Used To Seeking For First Principles. Those, On The Other Hand, Who Are Accustomed To Reason From First Principles Do Not Understand Matters Of Feeling At All, Because They Look For First Principles And Are Unable To Comprehend At A Glance.

Kind Words Produce Their Images On Men's Souls.

I Can Well Conceive A Man Without Hands, Feet, Head. But I Cannot Conceive Man Without Thought; He Would Be A Stone Or A Brute.

What Reason Have Atheists For Saying That We Cannot Rise Again? That What Has Never Been, Should Be, Or That What Has Been, Should Be Again? Is It More Difficult To Come Into Being Than To Return To It.

All This Visible World Is But An Imperceptible Point In The Ample Bosom Of Nature.

Everything That Is Incomprehensible Does Not, However, Cease To Exist.

Nothing Is Thoroughly Approved But Mediocrity. The Majority Has Established This, And It Fixes Its Fangs On Whatever Gets Beyond It Either Way.

Nature Has Made All Her Truths Independent Of One Another. Our Art Makes One Dependent On The Other. But This Is Not Natural. Each Keeps Its Own Place.

All Our Life Passes In This Way: We Seek Rest By Struggling Against Certain Obstacles, And Once They Are Overcome, Rest Proves Intolerable Because Of The Boredom It Produces.

Human Life Is Thus Only A Perpetual Illusion; Men Deceive And Flatter Each Other. No One Speaks Of Us In Our Presence As He Does Of Us In Our Absence. Human Society Is Founded On Mutual Deceit; Few Friendships Would Endure If Each Knew What His Friend Said Of Him In His Absence, Although He Then Spoke In Sincerity And Without Passion.

Caesar Was Too Old, It Seems To Me, To Go Off And Amuse Himself Conquering The World. Such A Pastime Was All Right For Augustus And Alexander; They Were Young Men, Not Easily Held In Check, But Caesar Ought To Have Been More Mature.

All That Tends Not To Charity Is Figurative. The Sole Aim Of The Scripture Is Charity.

We Are Never In Search Of Things, But Always In Search Of The Search.

It Has Pleased God That Divine Verities Should Not Enter The Heart Through The Understanding, But The Understanding Through The Heart.

To Go Beyond The Bounds Of Moderation Is To Outrage Humanity.

By Thought I Embrace The Universe.

It Is Certain That Those Who Have The Living Faith In Their Hearts See At Once That All Existence Is None Other Than The Work Of The God Whom They Adore. But For Those In Whom This Light Is Extinguished, [if We Were To Show Them Our Proofs Of The Existence Of God] Nothing Is More Calculated To Arouse Their Contempt. . . .

Little Things Console Us Because Little Things Afflict Us.

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