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The Parts Of The Universe ... All Are Connected With Each Other In Such A Way That I Think It To Be Impossible To Understand Any One Without The Whole.

-Blaise Pascal

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The Parts Of The

Blaise Pascal

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The Parts Of The Universe ... All Are Connected With Each Other In Such A Way That I Think It To Be Impossible To Understand Any One Without The Whole.

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Let A Man Choose What Condition He Will, And Let Him Accumulate Around Him All The Goods And Gratifications Seemingly Calculated To Make Him Happy In It; If That Man Is Left At Any Time Without Occupation Or Amusement, And Reflects On What He Is, The Meagre, Languid Felicity Of His Present Lot Will Not Bear Him Up. He Will Turn Necessarily To Gloomy Anticipations Of The Future; And Unless His Occupation Calls Him Out Of Himself, He Is Inevitably Wretched.

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.

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.

Whilst In Speaking Of Human Things, We Say That It Is Necessary To Know Them Before We Love Can Them. The Saints On The Contrary Say In Speaking Of Divine Things That It Is Necessary To Love Them In Order To Know Them, And That We Only Enter Truth Through Charity.

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

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 Not Our Task To Secure The Triumph Of Truth, But Merely To Fight On Its Behalf.

We Never Live, But We Hope To Live; And As We Are Always Arranging To Be Happy, It Must Be That We Never Are So.

In Difficult Times Carry Something Beautiful In Your Heart.

Difficult Times

If A Soldier Or Labourer Complain Of The Hardship Of His Lot, Set Him To Do Nothing.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Greatness Of Man Is So Evident That It Is Even Proved By His Wretchedness. For What In Animals Is Nature, We Call In Man Wretchedness--by Which We Recognize That, His Nature Being Now Like That Of Animals, He Has Fallen From A Better Nature Which Once Was His.

The Sole Cause Of All Human Misery Is The Inability Of People To Sit Quietly In Their Rooms.

Not Only Do We Know God By Jesus Christ Alone, But We Know Ourselves Only By Jesus Christ. We Know Life And Death Only Through Jesus Christ. Apart From Jesus Christ, We Do Not Know What Is Our Life, Nor Our Death, Nor God, Nor Ourselves.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Let Man Then Contemplate Nature In Full And Lofty Majesty, And Turn His Eyes Away From The Mean Objects Which Surround Him. Let Him Look At The Dazzling Light Hung Aloft As An Eternal Lamp To Lighten The Universe; Let Him Behold The Earth, A Mere Dot Compared With The Vast Circuit Which That Orb Describes, And Stand Amazed To Find That The Vast Circuit Itself Is But A Very Fine Point Compared With The Orbit Traced By The Starts As They Roll Their Course On High.

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

Men Often Take Their Imagination For Their Heart; And They Believe They Are Converted As Soon As They Think Of Being Converted.

Nature Confuses The Skeptics And Reason Confutes The Dogmatists

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

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.

Human Life Is Thus Only An Endless Illusion. Men Deceive And Flatter Each Other. No One Speaks Of Us In Our Presence As He Does When We Are Gone. Society Is Based On Mutual Hypocrisy.

All The Maxims Have Been Written. It Only Remains To Put Them Into Practice.

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

It Is Right That What Is Just Should Be Obeyed. It Is Necessary That What Is Strongest Should Be Obeyed.

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

To Scorn Philosophy Is Truly To Philosophize.

Faith Indeed Tells What The Senses Do Not Tell, But Not The Contrary Of What They See. It Is Above Them And Not Contrary To Them.

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

One Has Followed The Other In An Endless Circle, For It Is Certain That As Man's Insight Increases So He Finds Both Wretchedness And Greatness Within Himself. In A Word Man Knows He Is Wretched. Thus He Is Wretched Because He Is So, But He Is Truly Great Because He Knows It.

Voluptuousness, Like Justice, Is Blind, But That Is The Only Resemblance Between Them.

We Like Security: We Like The Pope To Be Infallible In Matters Of Faith, And Grave Doctors To Be So In Moral Questions So That We Can Feel Reassured.

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

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

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

By A Peculiar Prerogative, Not Only Each Individual Is Making Daily Advances In The Sciences, And May Make Advances In Morality (which Is The Science, By Way Of Eminence, Of Living Well And Being Happy), But All Mankind Together Is Making A Continual Progress In Proportion As The Universe Grows Older. So That The Whole Human Race, During The Course Of So Many Ages, May Be Considered As One Man Who Never Ceases To Live And Learn.

The Stream Is Always Purer At Its Source.

Vanity Is But The Surface.

Instinct Teaches Us To Look For Happiness Outside Ourselves.

Faith Is A Gift Of God.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Vanity Is Illustrated In The Cause And Effect Of Love, As In The Case Of Cleopatra.

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

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

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.

Most Of The Evils Of Life Arise From Man's Being Unable To Sit Still In A Room.

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

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

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

Man Is Only A Reed, The Weakest In Nature, But He Is A Thinking Reed. There Is No Need For The Whole Universe To Take Up Arms To Crush Him: A Vapour, A Drop Of Water Is Enough To Kill Him. But Even If The Universe Were To Crush Him, Man Would Still Be Nobler Than His Slayer, Because He Knows That He Is Dying And The Advantage The Universe Has Over Him. The Universe Knows None Of This.

Clarity Of Mind Means Clarity Of Passion, Too.

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

All Great Amusements Are Dangerous To The Christian Life; But Among All Those Which The World Has Invented There Is None More To Be Feared Than The Theater. It Is A Representation Of The Passions So Natural And So Delicate That It Excites Them And Gives Birth To Them In Our Hearts, And, Above All, To That Of Love.

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

E? Loquence Quipersuade Par Douceur, Non Par Empire, En Tyran, Non En Roi. Eloquence Should Persuade Gently, Not By Force Or Like A Tyrant Or King.

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

Wisdom Leads Us Back To Childhood.

Belief Is A Wise Wager. Granted That Faith Cannot Be Proved, What Harm Will Come To You If You Gamble On Its Truth And It Proves False? If You Gain, You Gain All; If You Lose, You Lose Nothing. Wager, Then, Without Hesitation, That He Exists.

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.

Il N'y A Que Deux Sortes D'hommes: Les Uns Justes, Qui Se Croient Pe Cheurs; Les Autres Pe Cheurs, Qui Se Croient Justes. There Are Only Two Types Of People: The Virtuous Who Believe Themselves To Be Sinners And The Sinners Who Believe Themselves To Be Virtuous.

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

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

We Only Consult The Ear Because The Heart Is Wanting.

The Only Shame Is To Have None.

Men Blaspheme What They Do Not Know.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Faith Embraces Many Truths Which Seem To Contradict Each Other.

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

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.

La Chose La Plus Importante A' Toute La Vie Est Le Choix Du Me Tier: Le Hasard En Dispose. The Most Important Thing In Life Is To Choose A Profession: Chance Arranges For That.

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

Man's Greatness Lies In His Power Of Thought.

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

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

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.

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

Noble Deeds That Are Concealed Are Most Esteemed.

Deeds And Words

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

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.

La Dernie' Re Chose Qu'on Trouve En Faisant Un Ouvrage, Est De Savoir Celle Qu'il Faut Mettre La Premie' Re. The Last Thing One Discovers In Composing A Work Iswhat To Put First.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We Conceal It From Ourselves In Vain - We Must Always Love Something. In Those Matters Seemingly Removed From Love, The Feeling Is Secretly To Be Found, And Man Cannot Possibly Live For A Moment Without It.

Perfect Clarity Would Profit The Intellect But Damage The Will.

Men Despise Religion. They Hate It And Are Afraid It May Be True. The Cure For This Is First To Show That Religion Is Not Contrary To Reason, But Worthy Of Reverence And Respect. Next Make It Attractive, Make Good Men Wish It Were True And Then Show That It Is.

We Sometimes Learn More From The Sight Of Evil Than From An Example Of Good; And It Is Well To Accustom Ourselves To Profit By The Evil Which Is So Common, While That Which Is Good Is So Rare.

The Entire Ocean Is Affected By A Single Pebble.

The Principles Of Pleasure Are Not Firm And Stable. They Are Different In All Mankind, And Variable In Every Particular With Such A Diversity That There Is No Man More Different From Another Than From Himself At Different Times.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

We See Neither Justice Nor Injustice Which Does Not Change Its Nature With Change In Climate. Three Degrees Of Latitude Reverse All Jurisprudence; A Meridian Decides The Truth.

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

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

Custom Determines What Is Agreeable.

If They [plato And Aristotle] Wrote About Politics It Was As If To Lay Down Rules For A Madhouse. And If They Pretended To Treat It As Something Really Important It Was Because They Knew That The Madmen They Were Talking To Believed Themselves To Be Kings And Emperors. They Humored These Beliefs In Order To Calm Down Their Madness With As Little Harm As Possible.

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

Inspirational Life

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

All That Remains

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Man's Greatness Is Great In That He Knows Himself Wretched. A Tree Does Not Know Itself Wretched. It Is Then Being Wretched To Know Oneself Wretched; But It Is Being Great To Know That One Is Wretched.

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.

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

True Eloquence Makes Light Of Eloquence, True Morality Makes Light Of Morality; That Is To Say, The Morality Of The Judgment, Which Has No Rules, Makes Light Of The Morality Of The Intellect.... To Make Light Of Philosophy Is To Be A True Philosopher.

The Heart Has Its Reasons Of Which Reason Knows Nothing.

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.

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

If Ignorance Were Bliss, He'd Be A Blister

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.

If We Submit Everything To Reason Our Religion Will Be Left With Nothing Mysterious Or Supernatural. If We Offend The Principles Of Reason Our Religion Will Be Absurd And Ridiculous . . . There Are Two Equally Dangerous Extremes: To Exclude Reason, To Admit Nothing But Reason.

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?

Each Man Is Everything To Himself, For With His Death Everything Is Dead For Him. That Is Why Each Of Us Thinks He Is Everything To Everyone. We Must Not Judge Nature By Ourselves, But By Its Own Standards.

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

The Heart Has Its Reasons Which Reason Knows Nothing Of... We Know The Truth Not Only By The Reason, But By The Heart." - Blaise Pascal

The God Of Christians Is A God Of Love And Comfort, A God Who Fills The Soul And Heart Of Those Whom He Possesses, A God Who Makes Them Conscious Of Their Inward Wretchedness, And His Infinite Mercy; Who Unites Himself To Their Inmost Soul, Who Fills It With Humility And Joy, With Confidence And Love, Who Renders Them Incapable Of Any Other End Than Himself.

Curiosity Is Nothing More Than Vanity. More Often Than Not We Only Seek Knowledge To Show It Off.

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

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

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.

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.

What Are Our Natural Principles But Principles Of Custom?

Nature Has Some Perfections To Show That She Is The Image Of God, And Some Defects To Show That She Is Only His Image.

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.

When Intuition And Logic Agree, You Are Always Right.

Amusement Allures And Deceives Us And Leads Us Down Imperceptibly In Thoughtlessness To The Grave

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

This Is What I See, And What Troubles Me. I Look On All Sides, And Everywhere I See Nothing But Obscurity. Nature Offers Me Nothing That Is Not A Matter Of Doubt And Disquiet.

Kind Words Do Not Cost Much. They Never Blister The Tongue Or Lips. They Make Other People Good-natured. They Also Produce Their Own Image On Men's Souls, And A Beautiful Image It Is.

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.

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

Our Achievements Of Today Are But The Sum Total Of Our Thoughts Of Yesterday. You Are Today Where The Thoughts Of Yesterday Have Brought You And You Will Be Tomorrow Where The Thoughts Of Today Take You.

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

Unless We Love The Truth We Cannot Know It.

Truth And Falsehood

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.

The State Of Man Is Inconstancy, Ennui, Anxiety.

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

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

Not To Be Mad Is Another Form Of Madness

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.

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

Beneath The Surface

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

We Do Not Content Ourselves With The Life We Have In Ourselves And In Our Being; We Desire To Live An Imaginary Life In The Mind Of Others, And For This Purpose We Endeavor To Shine. We Labor Unceasingly To Adorn And Preserve This Imaginary Existence And Neglect The Real.

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.

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.

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

The Best Defense Against Logic Is Ignorance.

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

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

Knowledge Has Two Extremes. The First Is The Pure Natural Ignorance In Which All Men Find Themselves At Birth. The Other Extreme Is That Reached By Great Minds, Who, Having Run Through All That Men Can Know, Find They Know Nothing, And Come Back Again To That Same Natural Ignorance From Which They Set Out; This Is A Learned Ignorance Which Is Conscious Of Itself.

To Ridicule Philosophy Is Really To Philosophize.

Fear Not, Provided You Fear; But If You Fear Not, Then Fear.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

All Men Seek Happiness. This Is Without Exception. Whatever Different Means They Employ, They All Tend To This End. The Cause Of Some Going To War, And Of Others Avoiding It, Is The Same Desire In Both, Attended With Different Views. The Will Never Takes The Least Step But To This Object. This Is The Motive Of Every Action Of Every Man, Even Of Those Who Hang Themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

Our Reason Is Always Disappointed By The Inconstancy Of Appearances.

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Miguel De Cervantes

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