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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.

-Blaise Pascal

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The Stoics Say, "retire

Blaise Pascal

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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.

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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.

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.

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

It Is Natural For The Mind To Believe And For The Will To Love; So That, For Want Of True Objects, They Must Attach Themselves To False.

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.

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

Our Senses Perceive No Extreme. Too Much Sound Deafens Us; Too Much Light Dazzles Us; Too Great Distance Or Proximity Hinders Ourview. Too Great Length And Too Great Brevity Of Discourse Tends To Obscurity; Too Much Truth Is Paralyzing.... In Short, Extremes Are For Us As Though They Were Not, And We Are Not Within Their Notice. They Escape Us, Or We Them.

Man Governs Himself More By Impulse Than Reason

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

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

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

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.

I Rather Live As If God Exists To Find Out That He Doesn't Than Live As If He Doesn't Exist To Find Out He Does.

All Men Are Almost Led To Believe Not Of Proof, But By Attraction. This Way Is Base, Ignoble, And Irrelevant; Every One Therefore Disavows It. Each One Professes To Believe And Even To Love Nothing But What He Knows To Be Worthy Of Belief And Love.

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

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

The Multitude Which Does Not Reduce Itself To Unity Is Confusion.

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

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.

Evil Is Easy, And Has Infinite Forms.

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

We Are Only Troubled By The Fears Which We, And Not Nature, Give Ourselves, For They Add To The State In Which We Are The Passions Of The State In Which We Are Not.

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

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

What Reason Have Atheists For Saying That We Cannot Rise Again? That What Has Never Been, Should Be, Or That What Has Been, Should Be Again? Is It More Difficult To Come Into Being Than To Return To It.

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

No Animal Admires Another Animal.

Our Notion Of Symmetry Is Derived Form The Human Face. Hence, We Demand Symmetry Horizontally And In Breadth Only, Not Vertically Nor In Depth.

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.

If Magistrates Had True Justice, And If Physicians Had The True Art Of Healing, They Would Have No Occasion For Square Caps; The Majesty Of These Sciences Would Itself Be Venerable Enough.

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.

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

The War Existing Between The Senses And Reason.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

To Find Recreation In Amusements Is Not Happiness; For This Joy Springs From Alien And Extrinsic Sources, And Is Therefore Dependent Upon And Subject To Interruption By A Thousand Accidents, Which May Minister Inevitable Affliction.

The Eternal Being Is Forever If He Is At All.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Man's Greatness Lies In His Power Of Thought.

Happiness Is Neither Within Us, Nor Without Us. It Is In The Union Of Ourselves With God.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Little Things Console Us Because Little Things Afflict Us.

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

By Thought I Embrace The Universe.

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

The Last Advance Of Reason Is To Recognize That It Is Surpassed By Innumerable Things; It Is Feeble If It Cannot Realize That.

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

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

When Intuition And Logic Agree, You Are Always Right.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Dans Une Grande A" Me Tout Est Grand. In A Great Soul Everything Isgreat.

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.

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

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

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

The Manner In Which Epictetus, Montaigne, And Salomon De Tultie Wrote, Is The Most Usual, The Most Suggestive, The Most Remembered, And The Oftener Quoted; Because It Is Entirely Composed Of Thoughts Born From The Common Talk Of Life.

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

The Christian Religion Teaches Me Two Points-that There Is A God Whom Men Can Know, And That Their Nature Is So Corrupt That They Are Unworthy Of Him.

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

All The Troubles Of Life Come Upon Us Because We Refuse To Sit Quietly For A While Each Day In Our Rooms.

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

The Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Frightens Me.

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

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.

Man Is Obviously Made For Thinking. Therein Lies All His Dignity And His Merit; And His Whole Duty Is To Think As He Ought.

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

It Is Impossible On Reasonable Grounds To Disbelieve Miracles.

The State Of Man Is Inconstancy, Ennui, Anxiety.

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

We Know The Truth Not Only Through Our Reason But Also Through Our Heart. It Is Through The Latter That We Know First Principles, And Reason, Which Has Nothing To Do With It, Tries In Vain To Refute Them.

The Imagination Enlarges Little Objects So As To Fill Our Souls With A Fantastic Estimate; And, With Rash Insolence, It Belittles The Great To Its Own Measure, As When Talking Of God.

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

Nothing Is Good But Mediocrity. The Majority Has Settled That, And Finds Fault With Him Who Escapes It At Whichever End... To Leave The Mean Is To Abandon Humanity.

What A Difficult Thing It Is To Ask Someone's Advice On A Matter Without Coloring His Judgment By The Way In Which We Present Our Problem.

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.

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.

Unable To Make What Is Just Strong, We Have Made What Is Strong Just.

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.

The Two Principles Of Truth, Reason And Senses, Are Not Only Both Not Genuine, But Are Engaged In Mutual Deception. The Senses Deceive Reason Through False Appearances, And The Senses Are Disturbed By Passions, Which Produce False Impressions.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Brave Deeds Are Wasted When Hidden.

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

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

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

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

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

Eloquence Is The Painting Of Thought.

I Do Not Admire A Virtue Like Valour When It Is Pushed To Excess, If I Do Not See At The Same Time The Excess Of The Opposite Virtue, As One Does In Epaminondas, Who Displayed Extreme Valour And Extreme Benevolence. For Otherwise It Is Not An Ascent, But A Fall. We Do Not Display Our Greatness By Placing Ourselves At One Extremity, But Rather By Being At Both At The Same Time, And Filling Up The Whole Of The Space Between Them.

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

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.

Great And Small Suffer The Same Mishaps.

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

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

Nothing Is So Conformable To Reason As To Disavow Reason.

The Only Shame Is To Have None.

Faith Embraces Many Truths Which Seem To Contradict Each Other.

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

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

How I Hate This Folly Of Not Believing In The Eucharist, Etc.! If The Gospel Be True, If Jesus Christ Be God, What Difficulty Is There?

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.

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

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

Love Has Reasons Which Reason Cannot Understand.

We Have An Idea Of Truth, Invincible To All Scepticism.

Noble Deeds That Are Concealed Are Most Esteemed.

Deeds And Words

What Are Our Natural Principles But Principles Of Custom?

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

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

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.

To Understand Is To Forgive.

Reason Is The Slow And Torturous Method By Which Those Who Do Not Know The Truth Discover It

When I See The Blind And Wretched State Of Men, When I Survey The Whole Universe In Its Deadness, And Man Left To Himself With No Light, As Though Lost In This Corner Of The Universe Without Knowing Who Put Him There, What He Has To Do, Or What Will Become Of Him When He Dies, Incapable Of Knowing Anything, I Am Moved To Terror, Like A Man Transported In His Sleep To Some Terrifying Desert Island, Who Wakes Up Quite Lost, With No Means Of Escape. Then I Marvel That So Wretched A State Does Not Drive People To Despair.

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

If Men Knew Themselves, God Would Heal And Pardon Them.

Reflect On Death As In Jesus Christ, Not As Without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ It Is Dreadful, It Is Alarming, It Is The Terror Of Nature. In Jesus Christ It Is Fair And Lovely, It Is Good And Holy, It Is The Joy Of Saints.

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.

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.

It Is The Contest That Delights Us, And Not The Victory.

The Weakness Of Human Reason Appears More Evidently In Those Who Know It Not Than In Those Who Know It.

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.

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.

Time Heals Griefs And Quarrels, For We Change And Are No Longer The Same Persons. Neither The Offender Nor The Offended Are Any More Themselves.

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

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

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.

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.

Vanity Is But The Surface.

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

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

It Is Not Shameful For A Man To Succumb To Pain And It Is Shameful To Succumb To Pleasure.

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

Force And Not Opinion Is The Queen Of The World; But It Is Opinion That Uses The Force. [fr., La Force Est La Reine Du Monde, Et Non Pas L'opinion; Mais L'opinion Est Celle Qui Use De La Force.]

One Of The Greatest Artifices The Devil Uses To Engage Men In Vice And Debauchery, Is To Fasten Names Of Contempt On Certain Virtues, And Thus Fill Weak Souls With A Foolish Fear Of Passing For Scrupulous, Should They Desire To Put Them In Practice.

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.

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

Distraction Is The Only Thing That Consoles Us For Our Miseries. Yet It Is Itself The Greatest Of Our Miseries.

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

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.

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 Imagination Disposes Of Everything. It Creates Beauty, Justice, And Happiness, Which Are The Whole Of The World.

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.

Our Senses Will Not Admit Anything Extreme. Too Much Noise Confuses Us, Too Much Light Dazzles Us, Too Great Distance Or Nearness Prevents Vision, Too Great Prolixity Or Brevity Weakens An Argument, Too Much Pleasure Gives Pain, Too Much Accordance Annoys.

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.

Nothing Is So Insufferable To Man As To Be Completely At Rest, Without Passions, Without Business, Without Diversion, Without Study. He Then Feels His Nothingness, His Forlornness, His Insufficiency, His Dependence, His Weakness, His Emptiness. There Will Immediately Arise From The Depth Of His Heart Weariness, Gloom, Sadness, Fretfulness, Vexation, Despair.

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?

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

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

Everyone, Without Exception, Is Searching For Happiness.

Searching For Happiness

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

We Know That There Is An Infinite, And We Know Not Its Nature. As We Know It To Be False That Numbers Are Finite, It Is Therefore True That There Is A Numerical Infinity. But We Know Not Of What Kind; It Is Untrue That It Is Even, Untrue That It Is Odd; For The Addition Of A Unit Does Not Change Its Nature; Yet It Is A Number, And Every Number Is Odd Or Even (this Certainly Holds Of Every Finite Number). Thus We May Quite Well Know That There Is A God Without Knowing What He Is.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Force Rules The World-not Opinion; But It Is Opinion That Makes Use Of Force.

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

All Men Seek Happiness. There Are No Exceptions.... This Is The Motive Of Every Act Of Every Man, Including Those Who Go And Hang Themselves.

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.

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.

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Christina Romer

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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