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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.

-Blaise Pascal

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The Arithmetical Machine Produces

Blaise Pascal

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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.

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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.

How Hollow Is The Heart Of Man, And How Full Of Excrement!

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

Man Is Full Of Desires: He Loves Only Those Who Can Satisfy Them All. "this Man Is A Good Mathematician," Someone Will Say. But I Have No Concern For Mathematics; He Would Take Me For A Proposition. "that One Is A Good Soldier." He Would Take Me For A Besieged Town. I Need, That Is To Say, A Decent Man Who Can Accommodate Himself To All My Desires In A General Sort Of Way.

When Intuition And Logic Agree, You Are Always Right.

Those Great Efforts Of Intellect, Upon Which The Mind Sometimes Touches, Are Such That It Cannot Maintain Itself There. It Only Leaps To Them, Not As Upon A Throne, Forever, But Merely For An Instant.

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

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

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

The Fall Is An Offense To Human Reason, But Once Accepted, It Makes Perfect Sense Of The Human Condition.

It Is Incomprehensible That God Should Exist, And It Is Incomprehensible That He Should Not 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?

In Difficult Times Carry Something Beautiful In Your Heart.

Difficult Times

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.

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

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

You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand.

All Men Naturally Hate Each Other. We Have Used Concupiscence As Best We Can To Make It Serve The Common Good, But This Is Mere Sham And A False Image Of Charity, For Essentially It Is Just Hate.

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.

When Everyone Is Moving Towards Depravity, No One Seems To Be Moving, But If Someone Stops He Shows Up The Others Who Are Rushing On, By Acting As A Fixed Point.

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.

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

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

I Should Not Be A Christian But For The Miracles.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Nature Imitates Herself. A Grain Thrown Into Good Ground Brings Forth Fruit; A Principle Thrown Into A Good Mind Brings Forth Fruit. Everything Is Created And Conducted By The Same Master-the Root, The Branch, The Fruits-the Principles, The Consequences.

All Our Reasoning Boils Down To Yielding To Sentiment.

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

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

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!

To Scorn Philosophy Is Truly To Philosophize.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Authority Of Reason Is Far More Imperious Than That Of A Master; For He Who Disobeys The One Is Unhappy, But He Who Disobeys The Other Is A Fool.

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

Different Meanings

The Sum Of A Man's Problems Come From His Inability To Be Alone In A Silent Room.

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

Perfect Clarity Would Profit The Intellect But Damage The Will.

Chess Is The Gymnasium Of The Mind.

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.

It Is Dangerous To Tell The People That The Laws Are Unjust; For They Obey Them Only Because They Think Them Just. Therefore It Isnecessary To Tell Them At The Same Time That They Must Obey Them Because They Are Laws, Just As They Must Obey Superiors, Not Because They Are Just, But Because They Are Superiors. In This Way All Sedition Is Prevented.

Between Us, And Hell Or Heaven, There Is Only Life Between The Two, Which Is The Most Fragile Thing In The World. Variant: Between Us And Heaven Or Hell There Is Only Life, Which Is The Frailest Thing In The World.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

There Is No Arena In Which Vanity Displays Itself Under Such A Variety Of Forms As In Conversation.

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

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

Making Fun Of Philosophy Is Really Philosophising.

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

Thinking Too Little About Things Or Thinking Too Much Both Make Us Obstinate And Fanatical.

You're Basically Killing Each Other To See Who's Got The Better Imaginary Friend.

Great And Small Suffer The Same Mishaps.

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.

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.

Can Anything Be Stupider Than That A Man Has The Right To Kill Me Because He Lives On The Other Side Of A River And His Ruler Has A Quarrel With Mine, Though I Have Not Quarrelled With Him?

La Vraie E Loquence Se Moque De L'e Loquence, La Vraie Morale Se Moque De La Morale. True Eloquence Has Notime Foreloquence, True Morality Has No Time For Morality.

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

Habit Is A Second Nature That Destroys The First. But What Is Nature? Why Is Habit Not Natural? I Am Very Much Afraid That Nature Itself Is Only A First Habit, Just As Habit Is A Second Nature.

In Order To Enter Into A Real Knowledge Of Your Condition, Consider It In This Image: A Man Was Cast By A Tempest Upon An Unknown Island, The Inhabitants Of Which Were In Trouble To Find Their King, Who Was Lost; And Having A Strong Resemblance Both In Form And Face To This King, He Was Taken For Him, And Acknowledged In This Capacity By All The People.

Justice Is What Is Established; And Thus All Our Established Laws Will Necessarily Be Regarded As Just Without Examination, Since They Are Established.

If Our Condition Were Truly Happy, We Would Not Need Diversion From Thinking Of It In Order To Make Ourselves Happy.

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

Our Natures Lie In Motion, Without Which We Die.

It Is Not Certain That Everything Is Uncertain.

The Incredulous Are The More Credulous. They Believe The Miracles Of Vespasian That They May Not Believe Those Of Moses. [fr., Incredules Les Plus Credules. Ils Croient Les Miracle De Vespasien, Pour Ne Pas Croire Ceux De Moise.]

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

Eloquence Is The Painting Of Thought.

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

Faith Is A Gift Of God.

Nature Confuses The Skeptics And Reason Confutes The Dogmatists

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

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

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.

The Immortality Of The Soul Is A Matter Which Is Of So Great Consequence To Us And Which Touches Us So Profoundly That We Must Have Lost All Feeling To Be Indifferent About It.

Continuity In Everything Is Unpleasant.

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

Clarity Of Mind Means Clarity Of Passion, Too.

Little Things Console Us Because Little Things Afflict Us.

Jesus Is The God Whom We Can Approach Without Pride And Before Whom We Can Humble Ourselves Without Despair.

When Malice Has Reason On Its Side, It Looks Forth Bravely, And Displays That Reason In All Its Luster. When Austerity And Self-denial Have Not Realized True Happiness, And The Soul Returns To The Dictates Of Nature, The Reaction Is Fearfully Extravagant.

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

Habit Is A Second Nature, Which Destroys The First.

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.

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

It Is Not Only Old And Early Impressions That Deceive Us; The Charms Of Novelty Have The Same Power.

Since We Cannot Be Universal And Know All That Is To Be Known Of Everything, We Ought To Know A Little About Everything. For It Is Far Better To Know Something About Everything Than To Know All About One Thing. This Universality Is The Best. If We Can Have Both, Still Better; But If We Must Choose, We Ought To Choose The Former.

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.

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

Earnestness Is Enthusiasm Tempered By Reason.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Continuous Eloquence Is Tedious.

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

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.

Look For The Truth, It Wants To Be Found.

We Know Truth, Not Only By The Reason, But Also By The Heart.

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

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

All That Remains

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

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.

Man Governs Himself More By Impulse Than Reason

Let No One Say That I Have Said Nothing New... The Arrangement Of The Subject Is New. When We Play Tennis, We Both Play With The Same Ball, But One Of Us Places It Better.

How Comes It That A Cripple Does Not Offend Us, But A Fool Does? Because A Cripple Recognizes That We Walk Straight, Whereas A Fool Declares That It Is We Who Are Silly; If It Were Not So, We Should Feel Pity And Not Anger.

What Are Our Natural Principles But Principles Of Custom?

When Some Passion Or Effect Is Described In A Natural Style, We Find Within Ourselves The Truth Of What We Hear, Without Knowing It Was There.

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

When We See An Effect Happen Always In The Same Manner, We Infer That It Takes Place By A Natural Necessity; As, For Instance, That The Sun Will Rise To Morrow; But Nature Often Deceives Us, And Will Not Submit To Its Own Rules.

When We Would Show Any One That He Is Mistaken, Our Best Course Is To Observe On What Side He Considers The Subject,--for His View Of If Is Generally Right On This Side,--and Admit To Him That He Is Right So Far. He Will Be Satisfied With This Acknowledgment, That He Was Not Wrong In His Judgment, But Only Inadvertent In Not Looking At The Whole Case.

I Feel Engulfed In The Infinite Immensity Of Spaces Whereof I Know Nothing, And Which Know Nothing Of Me, I Am Terrified The Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Alarms Me.

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. . . .

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

The Sensitivity Of Men To Small Matters, And Their Indifference To Great Ones, Indicates A Strange Inversion.

It Is Impossible On Reasonable Grounds To Disbelieve Miracles.

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

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.

Quand On Voit Le Style Naturel, On Est Tout E Tonne Et Ravi, Car On S'attendait De Voir Un Auteur, Et On Trouve Un Homme. When We See A Natural Style We Are Quite Amazed And Delighted, Because We Expected To See An Author And Find A Man.

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

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

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

Rivers Are Roads That Move And Carry Us Whither We Wish To Go. [fr., Les Rivieres Sont Des Chemins Qui Marchant Et Qui Portent Ou L'on Veut Aller.]

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.

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

There Is A Certain Standard Of Grace And Beauty Which Consists In A Certain Relation Between Our Nature, Such As It Is, Weak Or Strong, And The Thing Which Pleases Us. Whatever Is Formed According To This Standard Pleases Us, Be It House, Song, Discourse, Verse, Prose, Woman, Birds, Rivers, Trees, Room, Dress, And So On. Whatever Is Not Made According To This Standard Displeases Those Who Have Good Taste.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

We Like To Be Deceived.

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.

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.

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.

All The Unhappiness Of Men Arises From One Single Fact, That They Cannot Stay Quietly In Their Own Chamber.

No Animal Admires Another Animal.

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.

Our Reason Is Always Disappointed By The Inconstancy Of Appearances.

It Is Not From Space That I Must Seek My Dignity, But From The Government Of My Thought. I Shall Have No More If I Possess Worlds. By Space The Universe Encompasses And Swallows Me Up Like An Atom; By Thought I Comprehend The World.

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.

Men Despise Religion. They Hate It And Are Afraid It May Be True.

Let Each Of Us Examine His Thoughts

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.

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.

Reverend Fathers, My Letters Did Not Usually Follow Each Other At Such Close Intervals, Nor Were They So Long.... This One Would Not Be So Long Had I But The Leisure To Make It Shorter.

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.

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

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.

Civil Wars Are The Greatest Of Evils. They Are Inevitable, If We Wish To Reward Merit, For All Will Say That They Are Meritorious.

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

Opinion Is The Queen Of The World.

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 More Intelligent A Man Is, The More Originality He Discovers In Others.

Jesus Was In A Garden, Not Of Delight As The First Adam, In Which He Destroyed Himself And The Whole Human Race, But In One Of Agony, In Which He Saved Himself And The Whole Human Race.

That Queen, Of Error, Whom We Call Fancy And Opinion, Is The More Deceitful Because She Does Not Always Deceive. She Would Be The Infallible Rule Of Truth If She Were The Infallible Rule Of Falsehood; But Being Only Most Frequently In Error, She Gives No Evidence Of Her Real Quality, For She Marks With The Same Character Both That Which Is True And That Which Is False.

Two Similar Faces, Neither Of Which Alone Causes Laughter, Use Laughter When They Are Together, By Their Resemblance.

Man Lives Between The Infinitely Large And The Infinitely Small.

So We Can Only Know God Well By Knowing Our Iniquities. Therefore Those Who Have Known God, Without Knowing Their Wretchedness, Have Not Glorified Him, But Have Glorified Themselves.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Nothing Is So Conformable To Reason As To Disavow Reason.

No One Is Discontented At Not Being A King Except A Discrowned King ... Unhappiness Almost Invariably Indicates The Existence Of A Road Not Taken, A Talent Undeveloped, A Self Not Recognized.

Le Nez De Cle Opa" Tre: S'il E U" T E Te Plus Court, Toute La Face De La Terre Aurait Change . Cleopatra'snose: If It Had Beenshorter The Whole Face Of The Earth Would Have Been Different.

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

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.

Put The World's Greatest Philosopher On A Plank That Is Wider Than Need Be; If There Is A Precipe Below, Although His Reason May Convince Him That He Is Safe, His Imagination Will Prevail.

Custom Determines What Is Agreeable.

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

Kind Words Do Not Cost Much. Yet They Accomplish Much.

Accomplish Nothing

All Our Dignity Lies In Our Thoughts.

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.

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.

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Russell T Davies

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