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As We Speak Of Poetical Beauty, So Ought We To Speak Of Mathematical Beauty And Medical Beauty. But We Do Not Do So; And That Reason Is That We Know Well What Is The Object Of Mathematics, And That It Consists In Proofs, And What Is The Object Of Medicine, And That It Consists In Healing. But We Do Not Know In What Grace Consists, Which Is The Object Of Poetry.

-Blaise Pascal

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As We Speak Of

Blaise Pascal

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As We Speak Of Poetical Beauty, So Ought We To Speak Of Mathematical Beauty And Medical Beauty. But We Do Not Do So; And That Reason Is That We Know Well What Is The Object Of Mathematics, And That It Consists In Proofs, And What Is The Object Of Medicine, And That It Consists In Healing. But We Do Not Know In What Grace Consists, Which Is The Object Of Poetry.

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

Le Silence Est La Plus Grande Perse Cution: Jamais Les Saints Ne Se Sont Tus. Silence Is The Greatest Of All Persecutions: No Saint Was Ever Silent.

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.

Le Moi Est Ha|«s Sable. The Self Is Hateful.

Habit Is A Second Nature, Which Destroys The First.

As Men Are Not Able To Fight Against Death, Misery, Ignorance, They Have Taken It Into Their Heads, In Order To Be Happy, Not To Think Of Them At All.

Man Is So Made That By Continually Telling Him He Is A Fool He Believes It, And By Continually Telling It To Himself He Makes Himself Believe It. For Man Holds An Inward Talk With Himself, Which It Pays Him To Regulate.

Opinion Is, As It Were, The Queen Of The World, But Force Is Its Tyrant.

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

Lost Friendship

Lost Everything

There Is A Lot Of Difference Between Tempting And Leading Into Error. God Tempts But Does Not Lead Into Error. To Tempt Is To Provide Opportunities For Us To Do Certain Things If We Do Not Love God, But Putting Us Under No Necessity To Do So. To Lead Into Error Is To Compel A Man Necessarily To Conclude And Follow A Falsehood.

St. Augustine Teaches Us That There Is In Each Man A Serpent, An Eve, And An Adam. Our Senses And Natural Propensities Are The Serpent; The Excitable Desire Is The Eve; And Reason Is The Adam. Our Nature Tempts Us Perpetually; Criminal Desire Is Often Excited; But Sin Is Not Completed Till Reason Consents.

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.

If Man Made Himself The First Object Of Study, He Would See How Incapable He Is Of Going Further. How Can A Part Know The Whole?

Too Much Pleasure Disagrees With Us. Too Many Concords Are Annoying In Music; Too Many Benefits Irritate Us; We Wish To Have The Wherewithal To Overpay Our Debts.

How Vain Painting Is-we Admire The Realistic Depiction Of Objects Which In Their Original State We Don't Admire At All.

What A Chimaera Then Is Man, What A Novelty, What A Monster, What Chaos, What A Subject Of Contradiction, What A Prodigy! Judge Of All Things, Yet An Imbecile Earthworm; Depository Of Truth, Yet A Sewer Of Uncertainty And Error; Pride And Refuse Of The Universe. Who Shall Resolve This Tangle?

We View Things Not Only From Different Sides, But With Different Eyes; We Have No Wish To Find Them Alike.

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.

Sneezing Absorbs All The Functions Of The Soul Just As Much As The [sexual] Act, But We Do Not Draw From It The Same Conclusions Against The Greatness Of Man, Because It Is Involuntary; Although We Bring It About, We Do So Involuntarily. It Is Not For The Sake Of The Thing In Itself But For Another End, And Is Therefore Not A Sign Of Man's Weakness, Or His Subjection To This Act.

It Is Not Certain That Everything Is Uncertain.

The Truth About Nature We Discover With Our Brains. The Truth About Religion We Discover With Our Hearts.

Fire. God Of Abraham, God Of Isaac, God Of Jacob, Not Of The Philosophers And The Scholars. I Will Not Forget Thy Word. Amen.

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

To Find Recreation In Amusement Is Not Happiness.

Bless Yourself With Holy Water, Have Masses Said, And So On; By A Simple And Natural Process This Will Make You Believe, And Will Dull You - Will Quiet Your Proudly Critical Intellect.

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.

If You Do Not Love Too Much, You Do Not Love Enough.

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.

We Implore The Mercy Of God, Not That He May Leave Us At Peace In Our Vices, But That He May Deliver Us From Them.

You Gave Me Health That I Might Serve You; And So Often I Failed To Use My Good Health In Your Service. Now You Send Me Sickness In Order To Correct Me Grant That, Having Ignored The Things Of Spirit When My Body Was Vigorous, I May Now Enjoy Spiritual Sweetness While My Body Groans With Pain.

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

From Whence Comes It That A Cripple In Body Does Not Irritate Us, And That A Crippled Mind Enrages Us? It Is Because A Cripple Sees That We Go Right, And A Distorted Mind Says That It Is We Who Go Astray. But For That We Should Have More Pity And Less Rage.

The Method Of Not Erring Is Sought By All The World. The Logicians Profess To Guide It, The Geometricians Alone Attain It, And Apart From Science, And The Imitations Of It, There Are No True Demonstrations.

Human Beings Do Not Know Their Place And Purpose. They Have Fallen From Their True Place, And Lost Their True Purpose. They Search Everywhere For Their Place And Purpose, With Great Anxiety. But They Cannot Find Them Because They Are Surrounded By Darkness.

Atheism Shows Strength Of Mind, But Only To A Certain Degree.

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.

Custom Creates The Whole Of Equity, For The Simple Reason That It Is Accepted.

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

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

The Charm Of Fame Is So Great That We Like Every Object To Which It Is Attached, Even Death.

If You Believe In God You Are At No Disadvantage In This Life, And At Considerable Advantage In The Next. If You Do Not Believe, But Find In The Next That There Was A Next, You Are Most Unfortunate!

Wisdom Leads Us Back To Childhood.

No One Is Ignorant That There Are Two Avenues By Which Opinions Are Received Into The Soul, Which Are Its Two Principal Powers: The Understanding And The Will.

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

The Supreme Function Of Reason Is To Show Man That Some Things Are Beyond Reason.

Piety Is Different From Superstition. To Carry Piety To The Extent Of Superstition Is To Destroy It. The Heretics Reproach Us With This Superstitious Submission. It Is Doing What They Reproach Us With.

The Majority Is The Best Way, Because It Is Visible, And Has Strength To Make Itself Obeyed. Yet It Is The Opinion Of The Least Able.

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.

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.

Faith Affirms Many Things, Respecting Which The Senses Are Silent, But Nothing That They Deny. It Is Superior, But Never Opposed To Their Testimony

If I Had More Time I Would Write A Shorter Letter.

Education Produces Natural Intuitions, And Natural Intuitions Are Erased By Education.

God Has Given Us Evidence Sufficiently Clear To Convince Those With An Open Heart And Mind.

I Am In The Utmost Perplexity, Yand Have Wished A Hundred Times, That If There Is A A God, Nature Would Manifest Him Without Ambiguity, And That If There Is Not, Every Imaginary Sign Of His Existence Might Vanish : In Short, Let Nature Speak Distinctly, Or Be Totally Silent, And I Shall Know What Course To Take.

Any Unity Which Doesn't Have Its Origin In The Multitudes Is Tyranny.

Curiosity Is Only Vanity. We Usually Only Want To Know Something So That We Can Talk About It.

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

Necessity, That Great Refuge And Excuse For Human Frailty, Breaks Through All Law; And He Is Not To Be Accounted In Fault Whose Crime Is Not The Effect Of Choice, But Force.

Religion Is So Great A Thing That It Is Right That Those Who Will Not Take The Trouble To Seek It If It Be Obscure, Should Be Deprived Of It.

Let Man Reawake And Consider What He Is Compared With The Reality Of Things; Regard Himself Lost In This Remote Corner Of Nature; And From The Tiny Cell Where He Lodges, To Wit The Universe, Weigh At Their True Worth Earth, Kingdoms, Towns, Himself. What Is A Man Face To Face With Infinity?

When We Read Too Fast Or Too Slowly, We Understand Nothing.

Books And Reading

We Think Very Little Of Time Present; We Anticipate The Future, As Being Too Slow, And With A View To Hasten It Onward, We Recall The Past To Stay It As Too Swiftly Gone. We Are So Thoughtless, That We Thus Wander Through The Hours Which Are Not Here, Regardless Only Of The Moment That Is Actually Our Own.

Unless We Love The Truth We Cannot Know It.

Truth And Falsehood

A Jester, A Bad Character.

There Are Some Who Speak Well And Write Badly. For The Place And The Audience Warm Them, And Draw From Their Minds More Than They Think Of Without That Warmth.

For After All What Is Man In Nature? A Nothing In Relation To Infinity, All In Relation To Nothing, A Central Point Between Nothing And All And Infinitely Far From Understanding Either. The Ends Of Things And Their Beginnings Are Impregnably Concealed From Him In An Impenetrable Secret. He Is Equally Incapable Of Seeing The Nothingness Out Of Which He Was Drawn And The Infinite In Which He Is Engulfed.

If We Examine Our Thoughts, We Shall Find Them Always Occupied With The Past Or The Future.

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.

[on Vanity:] The Nose Of Cleopatra: If It Had Been Shorter, The Face Of The Earth Would Have Changed.

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

Truly It Is An Evil To Be Full Of Faults; But It Is A Still Greater Evil To Be Full Of Them And To Be Unwilling To Recognize Them, Since That Is To Add The Further Fault Of A Voluntary Illusion.

One-half Of Life Is Admitted By Us To Be Passed In Sleep, In Which, However, It May Appear Otherwise, We Have No Perception Of Truth, And All Our Feelings Are Delusions; Who Knows But The Other Half Of Life, In Which We Think We Are Awake, Is A Sleep Also, But In Some Respects Different From The Other, And From Which We Wake When We, As We Call It, Sleep. As A Man Dreams Often That He Is Dreaming, Crowding One Dreamy Delusion On Another.

One Must Have Deeper Motives And Judge Everything Accordingly, But Go On Talking Like An Ordinary Person.

When I Consider The Small Span Of My Life Absorbed In The Eternity Of All Time, Or The Small Part Of Space Which I Can Touch Or See Engulfed By The Infinite Immensity Of Spaces That I Know Not And That Know Me Not, I Am Frightened And Astonished To See Myself Here Instead Of There … Now Instead Of Then.

We Make An Idol Of Truth Itself; For Truth Apart From Charity Is Not God, But His Image And Idol, Which We Must Neither Love Nor Worship.

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.

How Shall One Who Is So Weak In His Childhood Become Really Strong When He Grows Older? We Only Change Our Fancies.

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

We Are So Presumptuous That We Wish To Be Known To All The World, Even To Those Who Come After Us; And We Are So Vain That The Esteem Of Five Or Six Persons Immediately Around Us Is Enough To Amuse And Satisfy Us.

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

Ordinary Extraordinary

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

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.

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

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!

Not The Zeal Alone Of Those Who Seek Him Proves God, But The Blindness Of Those Who Seek Him Not.

When We Wish To Correct With Advantage, And To Show Another That He Errs, We Must Notice From What Side He Views The Matter, For On That Side It Is Usually True.

Do Little Things As If They Were Great, Because Of The Majesty Of The Lord Jesus Christ Who Dwells In Thee.

You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand.

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.

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.

Vanity Of Science. Knowledge Of Physical Science Will Not Console Me For Ignorance Of Morality In Time Of Affliction, But Knowledge Of Morality Will Always Console Me For Ignorance Of Physical Science.

Nothing Gives Rest But The Sincere Search For Truth.

Mankind Suffers From Two Excesses: To Exclude Reason, And To Live By Nothing But Reason.

The Mind Must Not Be Forced; Artificial And Constrained Manners Fill It With Foolish Presumption, Through Unnatural Elevation And Vain And Ridiculous Inflation, Instead Of Solid And Vigorous Nutriment.

I Would Have Far More Fear Of Being Mistaken, And Of Finding That The Christian Religion Was True, Than Of Not Being Mistaken In Believing It True.

Amusement That Is Excessive And Followed Only For Its Own Sake, Allures And Deceives Us.

Two Things Control Men's Nature, Instinct And Experience.

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

The Greater Intellect One Has, The More Originality One Finds In Men. Ordinary Persons Find No Difference Between Men.

It's Not Those Who Write The Laws That Have The Greatest Impact On Society. It's Those Who Write The Songs.

Our Reason Is Always Disappointed By The Inconstancy Of Appearances.

Being Unable To Cure Death, Wretchedness, And Ignorance, Men Have Decided, In Order To Be Happy, Not To Think About Such Things.

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.

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.

Just As I Do Not Know Where I Came From, So I Do Not Know Where I Am Going. All I Know Is That When I Leave This World I Shall Fall Forever Into Oblivion, Or Into The Hands Of An Angry God, Without Knowing Which Of The Two Will Be My Lot For Eternity. Such Is My State Of Mind, Full Of Weakness And Uncertainty. The Only Conclusion I Can Draw From All This Is That I Must Pass My Days Without A Thought Of Trying To Find Out What Is Going To Happen To Me.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

Thus So Wretched Is Man That He Would Weary Even Without Any Cause For Weariness... And So Frivolous Is He That, Though Full Of A Thousand Reasons For Weariness, The Least Thing, Such As Playing Billiards Or Hitting A Ball, Is Sufficient Enough To Amuse Him.

There Are Hardly Any Truths Upon Which We Always Remain Agreed, And Still Fewer Objects Of Pleasure Which We Do Not Change Every Hour, I Do Not Know Whether There Is A Means Of Giving Fixed Rules For Adapting Discourse To The Inconstancy Of Our Caprices.

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.

Nothing Is More Dastardly Than To Act With Bravado Toward God.

To Understand Is To Forgive.

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.

When One Does Not Love Too Much, One Does Not Love Enough.

All Our Reasoning Boils Down To Yielding To Sentiment.

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 Exterior Must Be Joined To The Interior To Obtain Anything From God, That Is To Say, We Must Kneel, Pray With The Lips, And Soon, In Order That Proud Man, Who Would Not Submit Himself To God, May Be Now Subject To The Creature.

The Greatest Single Distinguishing Feature Of The Omnipotence Of God Is That Our Imagination Gets Lost Thinking About It.

They Do Not Know That They Seek Only The Chase And Not The Quarry.

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.

Reason Commands Us Far More Imperiously Than A Master; For In Disobeying The One We Are Unfortunate, And In Disobeying The Other We Are Fools.

The Whole Title By Which You Possess Your Property, Is Not A Title Of Nature But Of A Human Institution.

There Are Plenty Of Maxims In The World; All That Remains Is To Apply Them.

All That Remains

To Scorn Philosophy Is Truly To Philosophize.

The Last Thing That We Find In Making A Book Is To Know What We Must Put First.

There Are Only Three Types Of People; Those Who Have Found God And Serve Him; Those Who Have Not Found God And Seek Him, And Those Who Live Not Seeking, Or Finding Him. The First Are Rational And Happy; The Second Unhappy And Rational, And The Third Foolish And Unhappy.

Lust Is The Source Of All Our Actions, And Humanity.

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.

The World Is Satisfied With Words. Few Appreciate The Things Beneath. [fr., Le Monde Se Paye De Paroles; Peu Approfondissement Les Choses.]

The Heart Has Its Reasons, Which Reason Does Not Know. We Feel It In A Thousand Things. It Is The Heart Which Feels God, And Not Reason. This, Then, Is Perfect Faith: God Felt In The Heart.

Eloquence Is The Painting Of Thought.

Evil Is Easily Discovered; There Is An Infinite Variety; Good Is Almost Unique. But Some Kinds Of Evil Are Almost As Difficult To Discover As That Which We Call Good; And Often Particular Evil Of This Class Passes For Good. It Needs Even A Certain Greatness Of Soul To Attain To This, As To That Which Is Good.

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.

Happiness Can Be Found Neither In Ourselves Nor In External Things, But In God And In Ourselves As United To Him.

Contradiction Is Not A Sign Of Falsity, Nor The Lack Of Contradiction A Sign Of Truth.

The Past And Present Are Only Our Means; The Future Is Always Our End. Thus We Never Really Live, But Only Hope To Live.

The Art Of Revolutionizing And Overturning States Is To Undermine Established Customs, By Going Back To Their Origin, In Order To Mark Their Want Of Justice.

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

The Property Of Power Is To Protect.

The Man Who Knows God But Does Not Know His Own Misery, Becomes Proud. The Man Who Knows His Own Misery But Does Not Know God, Ends In Despair...the Knowledge Of Jesus Christ Constitutes The Middle Course Because In Him We Find Both God And Our Own Misery. Jesus Christ Is Therefore A God Whom We Approach Without Pride, And Before Whom We Humble Ourselves Without Despair.

Things Have Different Qualities, And The Soul Different Inclinations; For Nothing Is Simple Which Is Presented To The Soul, And The Soul Never Presents Itself Simply To Any Object. Hence It Comes That We Weep And Laugh At The Same Thing.

Death Itself Is Less Painful When It Comes Upon Us Unawares Than The Bare Contemplation Of It, Even When Danger Is Far Distant.

Look Somewhere Else For Someone Who Can Follow You In Your Researches About Numbers. For My Part, I Confess That They Are Far Beyond Me, And I Am Competent Only To Admire Them.

Eloquence; It Requires The Pleasant And The Real; But The Pleasant Must Itself Be Drawn From The True.

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.

On The Occasions When I Have Pondered Over Men's Various Activities, The Dangers And Worries They Are Exposed To At Court Or At War, From Which So Many Quarrels, Passions, Risky, Often Ill-conceived Actions And So On Are Born, I Have Often Said That Man's Unhappiness Springs From One Thing Alone, His Incapacity To Stay Quietly In One Room.

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

Nothing Fortifies Scepticism More Than That There Are Some Who Are Not Sceptics; If All Were So, They Would Be Wrong.

En Un Mot, L'homme Conna|"t Qu'il Est Mise Rable: Il Est Donc Mise Rable, Puisqu'il L'est; Mais Il Est Bien Grand, Puisqu'il Le Conna|"t. In One Word, Man Knows That He Is Miserable And Therefore He Is Miserable Because He Knows It; But He Is Also Worthy, Because He Knows His Condition.

The Law Required What It Could Not Give. Grace Gives That Which It Requires.

Le Silence E Ternel De Ces Espaces Infinis M'effraie. The Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Fills Me With Dread.

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

May God Never Abandon Me.

The Great Mass Of People Judge Well Of Things, For They Are In Natural Ignorance, Which Is Man's True State.

The Gospel To Me Is Simply Irresistible.

Dull Minds Are Never Either Intuitive Or Mathematical.

...for The Truth Is Always Older Than All The Opinions Men Have Held Regarding It; And One Should Be Ignoring The Nature Of Truth If We Imagined That The Truth Began At The Time It Came To Be Known.

Clarity Of Mind Means Clarity Of Passion, Too; This Is Why A Great And Clear Mind Loves Ardently And Sees Distinctly What It Loves.

There Would Be Too Great Darkness, If Truth Had Not Visible Signs.

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 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.

Rivers Are Highways That Move On And Bear Us Whither We Wish To Go.

The Stoics Say, "retire Within Yourselves; It Is There You Will Find Your Rest." And That Is Not True. Others Say, "go Out Of Yourselves; Seek Happiness In Amusement." And This Is Not True. Illness Comes. Happiness Is Neither Without Us Nor Within Us. It Is In God, Both Without Us And Within Us.

Without [diversion] We Would Be In A State Of Weariness, And This Weariness Would Spur Us On To Seek A More Solid Means Of Escaping From It. But Diversion Amuses Us, And Leads Us Unconsciously To Death.

One Must Know Oneself. If This Does Not Serve To Discover Truth, It At Least Serves As A Rule Of Life And There Is Nothing Better.

Which Is The More Believable Of The Two, Moses Or China?

I Take It As A Matter Not To Be Disputed, That If All Knew What Each Said Of The Other, There Would Not Be Four Friends In The World. This Seems Proved By The Quarrels And Disputes Caused By The Disclosures Which Are Occasionally Made.

Nothing Is So Intolerable To Man As Being Fully At Rest, Without Passion, Without Business, Without Entertainment, Without Care. It Is Then That He Recognizes That He Is Empty, Insufficient, Dependent, Ineffectual. From The Depths Of His Soul Now Comes At Once Boredom, Gloom, Sorrow, Chagrin, Resentment And Despair.

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

Orthodoxy On One Side Of The Pyrenees May Be Heresy On The Other.

Man Is So Great That His Greatness Appears Even In The Consciousness Of His Misery. A Tree Does Not Know Itself To Be Miserable. It Is True That It Is Misery Indeed To Know One's Self To Be Miserable; But Then It Is Greatness Also. In This Way, All Man's Miseries Go To Prove His Greatness. They Are The Miseries Of A Mighty Potentate, Of A Dethroned Monarch.

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

The Secrets Of Nature Are Concealed; Her Agency Is Perpetual, But We Do Not Always Discover Its Effects; Time Reveals Them From Age To Age; And Although She Is Always The Same In Herself, She Is Not Always Equally Well Known.

The Best Defense Against Logic Is Ignorance.

He That Takes Truth For His Guide, And Duty For His End, May Safely Trust To God's Providence To Lead Him Aright.

There Is Enough Light For Those Who Only Desire To See, And Enough Obscurity For Those Who Have A Contrary Disposition

If It Is An Extraordinary Blindness To Live Without Investigating What We Are, It Is A Terrible One To Live An Evil Life, While Believing In God

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.

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

Either Christianity Is True Or It's False. If You Bet That It's True, And You Believe In God And Submit To Him, Then If It Is True, You've Gained God, Heaven, And Everything Else. If It's False, You've Lost Nothing, But You've Had A Good Life Marked By Peace And The Illusion That Ultimately, Everything Makes Sense. If You Bet That Christianity Is Not True, And It's False, You've Lost Nothing. But If You Bet That It's False, And It Turns Out To Be True, You've Lost Everything And You Get To Spend Eternity In Hell.

Ugly Deeds Are Most Estimable When Hidden.

Man Is To Himself The Most Wonderful Object In Nature; For He Cannot Conceive What The Body Is, Still Less What The Mind Is, And Least Of All How A Body Should Be United To A Mind. This Is The Consummation Of His Difficulties, And Yet It Is His Very Being.

Let Each Of Us Examine His Thoughts; He Will Find Them Wholly Concerned With The Past Or The Future. We Almost Never Think Of The Present, And If We Do Think Of It, It Is Only To See What Light Is Throws On Our Plans For The Future. The Present Is Never Our End. The Past And The Present Are Our Means, The Future Alone Our End. Thus We Never Actually Live, But Hope To Live, And Since We Are Always Planning How To Be Happy, It Is Inevitable That We Should Never Be So.

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

To Make A Man A Saint, It Must Indeed Be By Grace; And Whoever Doubts This Does Not Know What A Saint Is, Or A Man.

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.

It Is Of Dangerous Consequence To Represent To Man How Near He Is To The Level Of Beasts, Without Showing Him At The Same Time His Greatness. It Is Likewise Dangerous To Let Him See His Greatness Without His Meanness. It Is More Dangerous Yet To Leave Him Ignorant Of Either; But Very Beneficial That He Should Be Made Sensible Of Both.

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.

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

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.

We Have So Exalted A Notion Of The Human Soul That We Cannot Bear To Be Despised, Or Even Not To Be Esteemed By It. Man, In Fact, Places All His Happiness In This Esteem.

The Heart Has Arguments With Which The Logic Of Mind Is Not Aquainted.

It Is The Heart Which Perceives God And Not The Reason. That Is What Faith Is: God Perceived By The Heart, Not By The Reason.

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

Human Beings Must Be Known To Be Loved; But Divine Beings Must Be Loved To Be Known.

Native American

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.

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

It Is Impossible On Reasonable Grounds To Disbelieve Miracles.

It Is Not Possible To Have Reasonable Grounds For Not Believing In Miracles.

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

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