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L'homme N'est Ni Ange Ni Be" Te, Et Le Malheur Veut Que Qui Veut Faire L'ange Fait La Be" Te. Man Is Neither Angel Nor Beast.unfortunately, He Who Wants To Act The Angel Often Acts The Beast.

-Blaise Pascal

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L'homme N'est Ni Ange

Blaise Pascal

...

L'homme N'est Ni Ange Ni Be" Te, Et Le Malheur Veut Que Qui Veut Faire L'ange Fait La Be" Te. Man Is Neither Angel Nor Beast.unfortunately, He Who Wants To Act The Angel Often Acts The Beast.

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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.

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.

The Finite Is Annihilated In The Presence Of The Infinite, And Becomes A Pure Nothing. So Our Spirit Before God, So Our Justice Before Divine Justice.

We Know Then The Existence And Nature Of The Finite, Because We Also Are Finite And Have Extension. We Know The Existence Of The Infinite And Are Ignorant Of Its Nature, Because It Has Extension Like Us, But Not Limits Like Us. But We Know Neither The Existence Nor The Nature Of God, Because He Has Neither Extension Nor Limits.

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.

Fuller Believed Human Societies Would Soon Rely Mainly On Renewable Sources Of Energy, Such As Solar- And Wind-derived Electricity,. Envisioned An Age Of "universal Education And Sustenance Of All Humanity". "the Heart Has Reasons That Reason Does Not Understand."

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.

All Is One, All Is Different. How Many Natures Exist In Man? How Many Vocations? And By What Chance Does Each Man Ordinarily Choose What He Has Heard Praised?

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

A Man Does Not Show His Greatness By Being At One Extremity, But Rather By Touching Both At Once.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Let Us Weigh The Gain And The Loss, In Wagering That God Is. Consider These Alternatives: If You Win, You Win All, If You Lose You Lose Nothing. Do Not Hesitate, Then, To Wager That He Is.

Lost Friendship

If You Gain, You Gain All; If You Lose, You Lose Nothing. Wager, Then, Without Hesitation, That He Exists.

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.

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.

We Never Do Evil So Effectually As When We Are Led To Do It By A False Principle Of Conscience.

Discourses On Humility Are A Source Of Pride In The Vain And Of Humility In The Humble. So Those On Scepticism Cause Believers To Affirm. Few Men Speak Humbly Of Humility, Chastely Of Chastity, Few Doubtingly Of Scepticism.

Imagination Magnifies Small Objects With Fantastic Exaggeration Until They Fill Our Soul, And With Bold Insolence Cuts Down Great Things To Its Own Size, As When Speaking Of God.

The Sweetness Of Glory Is So Great That, Join It To What We Will, Even To Death, We Love It.

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.

Words Differently Arranged Have A Different Meaning, And Meanings Differently Arranged Have Different Effects.

Different Meanings

There Is A God-shaped Hole In The Life Of Every Man.

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

All That Remains

There Is Nothing So Insupportable To Man As To Be In Entire Repose, Without Passion, Occupation, Amusement, Or Application. Then It Is That He Feels His Own Nothingness, Isolation, Insignificance, Dependent Nature, Powerless, Emptiness. Immediately There Issue From His Soul Ennui, Sadness, Chagrin, Vexation, Despair.

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.

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

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

What Can Be Seen On Earth Points To Neither The Total Absence Nor The Obvious Presence Of Divinity, But To The Presence Of A Hidden God. Everything Bears This Mark.

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.

Wisdom Leads Us Back To Childhood.

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

The State Of Man Is Inconstancy, Ennui, Anxiety.

All Mankind's Troubles Are Caused By One Single Thing, Which Is Their Inability To Sit Quietly.

He Who Does Not Know His Way To The Sea Should Take A River For His Guide.

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?

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.

Let Us, Then, Take Our Compass; We Are Something, And We Are Not Everything. The Nature Of Our Existence Hides From Us The Knowledge Of First Beginnings Which Are Born Of The Nothing; And The Littleness Of Our Being Conceals From Us The Sight Of The Infinite. Our Intellect Holds The Same Position In The World Of Thought As Our Body Occupies In The Expanse Of Nature.

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?

Vanity Is But The Surface.

Cold Words Freeze People, And Hot Words Scorch Them, And Bitter Words Make Them Bitter, And Wrathful Words Make Them Wrathful. Kind Words Also Produce Their Own Image On Men's Souls; And A Beautiful Image It Is. They Smooth, And Quiet, And Comfort The Hearer.

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

To Call A King "prince" Is Pleasing, Because It Diminishes His Rank.

The Stream Is Always Purer At Its Source. [fr., Les Choses Valent Toujours Mieux Dans Leur Source.]

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.

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

Habit Is A Second Nature, Which Destroys The First.

Perfect Clarity Would Profit The Intellect But Damage The Will.

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

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 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.

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.

Death Is Easier To Bear Without Thinking Of It, Than The Thought Of Death Without Peril.

If I Believe In God And Life After Death And You Do Not, And If There Is No God, We Both Lose When We Die. However, If There Is A God, You Still Lose And I Gain Everything.

If There Is A God

The Philosophers Talk To You About The Dignity Of Man, And They Tempt You To Pride, Or They Talk To You About The Misery Of Man, And They Tempt You To Despair.

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.

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

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.

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

Inspirational Life

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

If A Man Loves A Woman For Her Beauty, Does He Love Her? No; For The Smallpox, Which Destroys Her Beauty Without Killing Her, Causes His Love To Cease. And If Any One Loves Me For My Judgment Or My Memory, Does He Really Love Me? No; For I Can Lose These Qualities Without Ceasing To Be.

If You Want Others To Have A Good Opinion Of You, Say Nothing.

Having Been Unable To Strengthen Justice, We Have Justified Strength.

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.

The Best Defense Against Logic Is Ignorance.

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

I Cannot Judge My Work While I Am Doing It. I Have To Do As Painters Do, Stand Back And View It From A Distance, But Not Too Great A Distance. How Great? Guess.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The Last Thing We Decide In Writing A Book Is What To Put First.

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

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.

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

Native American

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. . . .

Man Is Clearly Made To Think. It Is His Whole Dignity And His Whole Merit; And His Whole Duty Is To Think As He Ought. And The Order Of Thought Is To Begin With Ourselves, And With Our Author And Our End.

Let Man Then Contemplate The Whole Of Nature In Her Full And Grand Majesty... No Idea Approaches It. We May Enlarge Our Conceptions Beyond All Imaginable Space; We Only Produce Atoms In Comparison With The Reality Of Things. It Is An Infinite Sphere, The Center Of Which Is Everywhere, The Circumference Nowhere.

When A Man Who Accepts The Christian Doctrine Lives Unworthily Of It, It Is Much Clearer To Say He Is A Bad Christian Than To Say He Is Not A Christian.

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.

The More I See Of Mankind, The More I Prefer My Dog.

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

If God Exists, Not Seeking God Must Be The Gravest Error Imaginable. If One Decides To Sincerely Seek For God And Doesn't Find God, The Lost Effort Is Negligible In Comparison To What Is At Risk In Not Seeking God In The First Place.

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

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

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

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.

All Men's Miseries Derive From Not Being Able To Sit In A Quiet Room Alone.

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

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.

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?

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

Man's Sensitivity To The Little Things And Insensitivity To The Greatest Are The Signs Of A Strange Disorder.

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

Justice And Power Must Be Brought Together, So That Whatever Is Just May Be Powerful, And Whatever Is Powerful May Be Just.

We Must Keep Our Thought Secret, And Judge Everything By It, While Talking Like The People.

Too Much And Too Little Wine. Give Him None, He Cannot Find Truth; Give Him Too Much, The Same.

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.

The Only Shame Is To Have None.

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.

The Struggle Alone Pleases Us, Not The Victory.

If He Exalts Himself, I Humble Him. If He Humbles Himself, I Exalt Him. And I Go On Contradicting Him Until He Understands That He Is A Monster That Passes All Understanding.

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

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

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

All Our Reasoning Boils Down To Yielding To Sentiment.

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.

You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand.

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.

There Is A God-shaped Vacuum In Every Heart.

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

It Is An Appalling Thing To Feel All One Possesses Drain Away.

Kind Words Produce Their Own Image In Men's Souls; And A Beautiful Image It Is. They Soothe And Quiet And Comfort The Hearer. They Shame Him Out Of His Sour, Morose, Unkind Feelings. We Have Not Yet Begun To Use Kind Words In Such Abundance As They Ought To Be Used.

The Consciousness Of The Falsity Of Present Pleasures, And The Ignorance Of The Vanity Of Absent Pleasures, Cause Inconstancy.

When Intuition And Logic Agree, You Are Always Right.

Who Knows If This Other Half Of Life Where We Think We're Awake Is Not Another Sleep A Little Different From The First.

Generally We Are Occupied Either With The Miseries Which Now We Feel, Or With Those Which Threaten; And Even When We See Ourselves Sufficiently Secure From The Approach Of Either, Still Fretfulness, Though Unwarranted By Either Present Or Expected Affliction, Fails Not To Spring Up From The Deep Recesses Of The Heart, Where Its Roots Naturally Grow, And To Fill The Soul With Its Poison.

Men Blaspheme What They Do Not Know.

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.

[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.

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

Reason's Last Step Is To Acknowledge That There Are Infinitely Many Things Beyond It.

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

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

And Is It Not Obvious That, Just As It Is A Crime To Disturb The Peace When Truth Reigns, It Is Also A Crime To Remain At Peace When The Truth Is Being Destroyed?

If Man Should Commence By Studying Himself, He Would See How Impossible It Is To Go Further.

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.

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.

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.

We Must Learn Our Limits. We Are All Something, But None Of Us Are Everything.

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.

There Is A God Shaped Vacuum In The Heart Of Every Man Which Cannot Be Filled By Any Created Thing, But Only By God, The Creator, Made Known Through Jesus.

Love Knows No Limit To Its Endurance, No End To Its Trust, No Fading Of Its Hope; It Can Outlast Anything. Love Still Stands When All Else Has Fallen.

He Who Cannot Believe Is Cursed, For He Reveals By His Unbelief That God Has Not Chosen To Give Him Grace.

That We Must Love One God Only Is A Thing So Evident That It Does Not Require Miracles To Prove It.

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?

Men Are So Necessarily Mad, That Not To Be Mad Would Amount To Another Form Of Madness.

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

Man Finds Nothing So Intolerable As To Be In A State Of Complete Rest, Without Passions, Without Occupation, Without Diversion, Without Effort. Then He Feels His Nullity, Loneliness, Inadequacy, Dependence, Helplessness, Emptiness.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Brave Deeds Are Wasted When Hidden.

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.

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

To Ridicule Philosophy Is Really To Philosophize.

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

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.

Opinion Is The Queen Of The World.

Dull Minds Are Never Either Intuitive Or Mathematical.

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.

All The Miseries Of Mankind Come From One Thing, Not Knowing How To Remain Alone.

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.

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

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.

The Present Letter Is A Very Long One, Simply Because I Had No Leisure To Make It Shorter.

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

Few Men Speak Humbly Of Humility, Chastely Of Chastity, Skeptically Of Skepticism.

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

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.

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

All Sorrow Has Its Root In Man's Inability To Sit Quiet In A Room By Himself.

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

True Eloquence Scorns Eloquence.

Our Nature Lies In Movement; Complete Calm Is Death.

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.

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.

The Arithmetical Machine Produces Effects That Approach Nearer To Thought Than All The Actions Of Animals. But It Does Nothing That Would Enable Us To Attribute Will To It, As To The Animals.

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

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

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

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

Those Who Write Against Vanity Want The Glory Of Having Written Well, And Their Readers The Glory Of Reading Well, And I Who Write This Have The Same Desire, As Perhaps Those Who Read This Have Also.

Custom Determines What Is Agreeable.

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.

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

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

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

What Use Is It To Us To Hear It Said Of A Man That He Has Thrown Off The Yoke That He Does Not Believe There Is A God To Watch Over His Actions, That He Reckons Himself The Sole Master Of His Behavior, And That He Does Not Intend To Give An Account Of It To Anyone But Himself?

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

It Is Not Certain That Everything Is Uncertain.

The Stream Is Always Purer At Its Source.

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.

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

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

Our Achievements Of Today Are But The Sum Total Of Our Thoughts Of Yesterday.

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

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