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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.

-Blaise Pascal

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Fashion Is A Tyrant

Blaise Pascal

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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.

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

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

Man Is Nothing But Insincerity, Falsehood, And Hypocrisy, Both In Regard To Himself And In Regard To Others. He Does Not Wish That He Should Be Told The Truth, He Shuns Saying It To Others; And All These Moods, So Inconsistent With Justice And Reason, Have Their Roots In His Heart.

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

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.

The World Is Satisfied With Words, Few Care To Dive Beneath The Surface.

Beneath The Surface

When We Would Think Of God, How Many Things We Find Which Turn Us Away From Him, And Tempt Us To Think Otherwise. All This Is Evil, Yet It Is Innate.

We Are So Presumptuous That We Should Like To Be Known All Over The World, Even By People Who Will Only Come When We Are No More. Such Is Our Vanity That The Good Opinion Of Half A Dozen Of The People Around Us Gives Us Pleasure And Satisfaction.

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

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

To Go Beyond The Bounds Of Moderation Is To Outrage Humanity. The Greatness Of The Human Soul Is Shown By Knowing How To Keep Within Proper Bounds. There Are Two Equally Dangerous Extremes- To Shut Reason Out, And Not To Let Nothing In.

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

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

For Nature Is An Image Of Grace, And Visible Miracles Are Images Of The Invisible.

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

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.

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

All That Remains

People Are Generally Better Persuaded By The Reasons Which They Have Themselves Discovered Than By Those Which Have Come In To The Mind Of Others.

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.

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

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.

True Eloquence Makes Light Of Eloquence. True Morality Makes Light Of Morality.

The Stream Is Always Purer At Its Source.

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.

Nothing Is So Intolerable To Man As Being Fully At Rest, Without A Passion, Without Business, Without Entertainment, Without Care.

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.

Nature Confuses The Skeptics And Reason Confutes The Dogmatists

Our Nature Lies In Movement; Complete Calm Is Death.

Discourses On Humility Are A Source Of Pride In The Vain And Of Humility In The Humble.

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

It Is Certain That The Soul Is Either Mortal Or Immortal. The Decision Of This Question Must Make A Total Difference In The Principles Of Morals. Yet Philosophers Have Arranged Their Moral System Entirely Independent Of This. What An Extraordinary Blindness!

God Only Pours Out His Light Into The Mind After Having Subdued The Rebellion Of The Will By An Altogether Heavenly Gentleness Which Charms And Wins It.

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.

That Something So Obvious As The Vanity Of The World Should Be So Little Recognized That People Find It Odd And Surprising To Be Told That It Is Foolish To Seek Greatness; That Is Most Remarkable.

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.

It Is The Heart Which Perceives God And Not The Reason.

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

Concupiscence And Force Are The Source Of All Our Actions; Concupiscence Causes Voluntary Actions, Force Involuntary Ones.

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

Perfect Clarity Would Profit The Intellect But Damage The Will.

All Men Naturally Hate One Another. I Hold It A Fact, That If Men Knew Exactly What One Says Of The Other, There Would Not Be Four Friends In The World.

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.

There Are Vices Which Have No Hold Upon Us, But In Connection With Others; And Which, When You Cut Down The Trunk, Fall Like The Branches.

Rivers Are Roads Which Move, And Which Carry Us Whither We Desire To Go.

Eloquence Is A Way Of Saying Things In Such A Way, First, That Those To Whom We Speak May Listen To Them Without Pain And With Pleasure, And Second, That They Feel Themselves Interested, So That Self-love Leads Them More Willingly To Reflection Upon It.

Quelque E Tendue D'esprit Que L'on Ait, L'on N'est Capable Que D'une Grande Passion. However Vast A Man's Spirit, He Is Only Capable Of One Great Passion.

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

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

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.

I Bring You The Gift Of These Four Words: I Believe In You.

Equality Of Possessions Is No Doubt Right, But, As Men Could Not Make Might Obey Right, They Have Made Right Obey Might.

Without The Knowledge Of Our Wretchedness, The Knowledge Of God Creates Pride. With It, The Knowledge Of God Creates Despair. The Knowledge Of Christ Offers A Third Way, Because In Him We Find Both God And Our Wretchedness.

The State Of Man Is Inconstancy, Ennui, Anxiety.

Condition De L'homme: Inconstance, Ennui, Inquie Tude. Man's Condition. Inconstancy, Boredom, Anxiety.

Those Who Are Clever In Imagination Are Far More Pleased With Themselves Than Prudent Men Could Reasonably Be.

The Eternal Being Is Forever If He Is At All.

When We See A Natural Style, We Are Astonished And Charmed; For We Expected To See An Author, And We Find A Person.

What Part Of Us Feels Pleasure? Is It Our Hand, Our Arm, Our Flesh, Or Our Blood? It Must Obviously Be Something Immaterial.

All The Trouble In The World Is Due To The Fact That Man Cannot Sit Still In A Room.

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.

We Should Seek The Truth Without Hesitation; And, If We Refuse It, We Show That We Value The Esteem Of Men More Than The Search For Truth.

Good Deeds, When Concealed, Are The Most Admirable.

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

One-half Of The Ills Of Life Come Because Men Are Unwilling To Sit Down Quietly For Thirty Minutes To Think Through All The Possible Consequences Of Their Acts.

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

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?

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

Man Lives Between The Infinitely Large And The Infinitely Small.

The Struggle Alone Pleases Us, Not The Victory.

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.

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

It Is A Dangerous Experiment To Call In Gratitude As An Ally To Love. Love Is A Debt Which Inclination Always Pays, Obligation Never.

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.

Justice Is As Much A Matter Of Fashion As Charm Is.

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

The War Existing Between The Senses And Reason.

Plurality Which Is Not Reduced To Unity Is Confusion; Unity Which Does Not Depend On Plurality Is Tyranny.

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

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

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.

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

In Proportion As Our Own Mind Is Enlarged We Discover A Greater Number Of Men Of Originality. Commonplace People See No Difference Between One Man And Another.

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.

There Are Two Kinds Of People One Can Call Reasonable: Those Who Serve God With All Their Heart Because They Know Him, And Those Who Seek Him With All Their Heart Because They Do Not Know Him.

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

Man Is But A Reed, The Most Feeble Thing In Nature, But He Is A Thinking Reed.

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

Earnestness Is Enthusiasm Tempered By Reason.

When We Do Not Know The Truth Of A Thing, It Is Good That There Should Exist A Common Error Which Determines The Mind Of Man, As, For Example, The Moon, To Which Is Attributed The Change Of Seasons, The Progress Of Diseases, Etc. For The Chief Malady Of Man Is A Restless Curiosity About Things Which He Cannot Understand; And It Is Not So Bad For Him To Be In Error As To Be Curious To No Purpose.

You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand.

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

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

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

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

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. . . .

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.

Man Is Neither Angel Nor Beast.

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.

All Mankind's Unhappiness Derives From One Thing: His Inability To Know How To Remain In Repose In One Room.

You See, If The Height Of The Mercury [barometer] Column Is Less On The Top Of A Mountain Than At The Foot Of It (as I Have Many Reasons For Believing, Although Everyone Who Has So Far Written About It Is Of The Contrary Opinion), It Follows That The Weight Of The Air Must Be The Sole Cause Of The Phenomenon, And Not That Abhorrence Of A Vacuum, Since It Is Obvious That At The Foot Of The Mountain There Is More Air To Have Weight Than At The Summit, And We Cannot Possibly Say That The Air At The Foot Of The Mountain Has A Greater Aversion To Empty Space Than At The Top.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

A Jester, A Bad Character.

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.

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

A Little Thing Comforts Us Because A Little Thing Afflicts Us.

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

The End Point Of Rationality Is To Demonstrate The Limits Of Rationality.

[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.

That Which Makes Us Go So Far For Love Is That We Never Think That We Might Have Need Of Anything Besides That Which We Love.

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.

We Are Not Satisfied With Real Life; We Want To Live Some Imaginary Life In The Eyes Of Other People And To Seem Different From What We Actually Are.

There Are Two Equally Dangerous Extremes-to Shut Reason Out, And To Let Nothing Else In.

Everything That Is Written Merely To Please The Author Is Worthless.

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.

The Entire Ocean Is Affected By A Single Pebble.

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

What Matters It That Man Should Have A Little More Knowledge Of The Universe? If He Has It, He Gets Little Higher. Is He Not Always Infinitely Removed From The End, And Is Not The Duration Of Our Life Equally Removed From Eternity, Even If It Lasts Ten Years Longer?

When Intuition And Logic Agree, You Are Always Right.

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

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

At The Centre Of Every Human Being Is A God-shaped Vacuum Which Can Only Be Filled By Jesus Christ.

Must We Kill To Prevent There Being Any Wicked? This Is To Make Both Parties Wicked Instead Of One.

We Feel Neither Extreme Heat Nor Extreme Cold; Qualities That Are In Excess Are So Much At Variance With Our Feelings That They Are Impalpable: We Do Not Feel Them, Though We Suffer From Their Effects.

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

Either God Exists Or He Doesn't. Either I Believe In God Or I Don't. Of The Four Possibilities, Only One Is To My Disadvantage. To Avoid That Possibility, I Believe In God.

If There Is A God, He Is Infinitely Incomprehensible, Since, Having, Neither Parts Nor Limits, He Has No Affinity To Us. We Are Then Incapable Of Knowing Either What He Is Or If He Is. [so] You Must Wager. Let Us Weigh The Gain And The Loss In Wagering That God Is. Let Us Estimate These Two Chances. If You Gain, You Gain All; If You Lose, You Lose Nothing. Wager Then Without Hesitation That He Is.

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

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

Inspirational Life

Notre Nature Est Dans Le Mouvement; Le Repos Entier Est La Mort. Our Nature Consists In Movement; Absolute Rest Is Death.

Desire And Force Between Them Are Responsible For All Our Actions; Desire Causes Our Voluntary Acts, Force Our Involuntary.

Nothing Is Surer Than That The People Will Be Weak.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Imagination Cannot Make Fools Wise, But It Makes Them Happy, As Against Reason, Which Only Makes Its Friends Wretched: One Covers Them With Glory, The Other With Shame.

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

It Is Superstitious To Put One's Hopes In Formalities, But Arrogant To Refuse To Submit To Them.

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.

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.

Men Blaspheme What They Do Not Know.

Console-toi, Tu Ne Me Chercherais Pas Si Tu Ne M'avais Trouve . Comfort Yourself.you Would Not Seek Me If You Had Not Found Me.

Not Only Do We Know God Through Jesus Christ, We Only Know Ourselves Through Jesus Christ.

The Captain Of A Ship Is Not Chosen From Those Of The Passengers Who Comes From The Best Family.

Philosophers.-we Are Full Of Things Which Take Us Out Of Ourselves.

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.

What A Strange Vanity Painting Is; It Attracts Admiration By Resembling The Original, We Do Not Admire.

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.

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

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.

We Do Not Weary Of Eating And Sleeping Every Day, For Hunger And Sleepiness Recur. Without That We Should Weary Of Them. So, Without The Hunger For Spiritual Things, We Weary Of Them. Hunger After Righteousness--the Eighth Beatitude.

There Is Nothing That We Can See On Earth Which Does Not Either Show The Wretchedness Of Man Or The Mercy Of God. One Either Sees The Powerlessness Of Man Without God, Or The Strength Of Man With God.

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.

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.

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.

Man Is Equally Incapable Of Seeing The Nothingness From Which He Emerges And The Infinity In Which He Is Engulfed.

Nothing Is So Important To Man As His Own State; Nothing Is So Formidable To Him As Eternity. And Thus It Is Unnatural That Thereshould Be Men Indifferent To The Loss Of Their Existence And To The Perils Of Everlasting Suffering.

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

Our Imagination So Magnifies This Present Existence, By The Power Of Continual Reflection On It, And So Attenuates Eternity, By Not Thinking Of It At All, That We Reduce An Eternity To Nothingness, And Expand A Mere Nothing To An Eternity; And This Habit Is So Inveterately Rooted In Us That All The Force Of Reason Cannot Induce Us To Lay It Aside.

Who Confers Reputation? Who Gives Respect And Veneration To Persons, To Books, To Great Men? Who But Opinion? How Utterly Insufficient Are All The Riches Of The World Without Her Approbation!

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

Native American

Therefore, Those To Whom God Has Imparted Religion By Intuition Are Very Fortunate And Justly Convinced. But To Those Who Do Not Have It, We Can Give It Only By Reasoning, Waiting For God To Give Them Spiritual Insight, Without Which Faith Is Only Human And Useless For Salvation.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Heart Has Its Order, The Mind Has Its Own, Which Uses Principles And Demonstrations. The Heart Has A Different One. We Do Not Prove That We Ought To Be Loved By Setting Out In Order The Causes Of Love; That Would Be Absurd.

Our Soul Is Cast Into A Body, Where It Finds Number, Time, Dimension. Thereupon It Reasons, And Calls This Nature Necessity, And Can Believe Nothing Else.

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

No Animal Admires Another Animal.

Wisdom Leads Us Back To Childhood.

All Our Troubles Come From Not Being Able To Be Alone.

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

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

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.

We Never Love A Person, But Only Qualities.

Vanity Is So Secure In The Heart Of Man That Everyone Wants To Be Admired: Even I Who Write This, And You Who Read This.

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

The Origins Of Disputes Between Philosophers Is, That One Class Of Them Have Undertaken To Raise Man By Displaying His Greatness, And The Other To Debase Him By Showing His Miseries.

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.

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

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.

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?

Let Us Imagine A Number Of Men In Chains And All Condemned To Death, Where Some Are Killed Each Day In The Sight Of The Others, And Those Who Remain See Their Own Fate In That Of Their Fellows And Wait Their Turn, Looking At Each Other Sorrowfully And Without Hope. It Is An Image Of The Condition Of Man.

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

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.

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

Do You Wish People To Speak Well Of You? Then Do Not Speak At All Yourself.

Faith Embraces Many Truths Which Seem To Contradict Each Other.

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.

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.

We Need Not Have The Loftiest Mind To Understand That Here Is No Lasting And Real Satisfaction, That Our Pleasures Are Only Vanity, That Our Evils Are Infinite, And, Lastly, That Death, Which Threatens Us Every Moment, Must Infallibly Place Us Within A Few Years Under The Dreadful Necessity Of Being Forever Either Annihilated Or Unhappy.

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