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There Is A Virtuous Fear, Which Is The Effect Of Faith; And There Is A Vicious Fear, Which Is The Product Of Doubt. The Former Leads To Hope, As Relying On God, In Whom We Believe; The Latter Inclines To Despair, As Not Relying On God, In Whom We Do Not Believe. Persons Of The One Character Fear To Lose God; Persons Of The Other Character Fear To Find Him.

-Blaise Pascal

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There Is A Virtuous

Blaise Pascal

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There Is A Virtuous Fear, Which Is The Effect Of Faith; And There Is A Vicious Fear, Which Is The Product Of Doubt. The Former Leads To Hope, As Relying On God, In Whom We Believe; The Latter Inclines To Despair, As Not Relying On God, In Whom We Do Not Believe. Persons Of The One Character Fear To Lose God; Persons Of The Other Character Fear To Find Him.

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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.

The Great Mass Of People Judge Well Of Things, For They Are In Natural Ignorance, Which Is Man's True State.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Not Certain That Everything Is Uncertain.

All Who Say The Same Things Do Not Possess Them In The Same Manner; And Hence The Incomparable Author Of The Art Of Conversation Pauses With So Much Care To Make It Understood That We Must Not Judge Of The Capacity Of A Man By The Excellence Of A Happy Remark That We Heard Him Make. Let Us Penetrate, Says He, The Mind From Which It Proceeds. It Will Oftenest Be Seen That He Will Be Made To Disavow It On The Spot, And Will Be Drawn Very Far From This Better Thought In Which He Does Not Believe, To Plunge Himself Into Another, Quite Base And Ridiculous.

When A Natural Discourse Paints A Passion Or An Effect, One Feels Within Oneself The Truth Of What One Reads, Which Was There Before, Although One Did Not Know It. Hence One Is Inclined To Love Him Who Makes Us Feel It, For He Has Not Shown Us His Own Riches, But Ours. ...such Community Of Intellect That We Have With Him Necessarily Inclines The Heart To Love.

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.

Men Blaspheme What They Do Not Know.

There Was Once In Man A True Happiness Of Which There Now Remain To Him Only The Mark And Empty Trace, Which He In Vain Tries To Fill From All His Surroundings, Seeking From Things Absent The Help He Does Not Obtain In Things Present.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Since We Cannot Know All That There Is To Be Known About Anything, We Ought To Know A Little About Everything.

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

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

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

Inspirational Life

In Each Action We Must Look Beyond The Action At Our Past, Present, And Future State, And At Others Whom It Affects, And See The Relations Of All Those Things. And Then We Shall Be Very Cautious.

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.

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

It Is Dangerous To Explain Too Clearly To Man How Like He Is To The Animals Without Pointing Out His Greatness. It Is Also Dangerous To Make Too Much Of His Greatness Without His Vileness. It Is Still More Dangerous To Leave Him In Ignorance Of Both, But It Is Most Valuable To Represent Both To Him. Man Must Not Be Allowed To Believe That He Is Equal Either To Animals Or To Angels, Nor To Be Unaware Of Either, But He Must Know Both.

Notwithstanding The Sight Of All Our Miseries, Which Press Upon Us And Take Us By The Throat, We Have An Instinct Which We Cannot Repress, And Which Lifts Us Up.

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

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

Different Meanings

I Cannot Forgive Descartes. In All His Philosophy He Would Have Been Quite Willing To Dispense With God. But He Had To Make Him Give A Fillip To Set The World In Motion; Beyond This, He Has No Further Need Of God.

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.

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?

The Last Function Of Reason Is To Recognize That There Are An Infinity Of Things Which Surpass It.

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

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?

Even Those Who Write Against Fame Wish For The Fame Of Having Written Well, And Those Who Read Their Works Desire The Fame Of Having Read Them.

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

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

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.

Vanity Is But The Surface.

The State Of Man Is Inconstancy, Ennui, Anxiety.

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

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

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.

To Understand Is To Forgive.

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.

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.

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

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

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

That Dog Is Mine Said Those Poor Children; That Place In The Sun Is Mine; Such Is The Beginning And Type Of Usurpation Throughout The Earth. [fr., Ce Chien Est A Moi, Disaient Ces Pauvres Enfants; C'est La Ma Place Au Soleil. Voila Le Commencement Et L'image De L'usurpation De Toute La Terre.]

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

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

Native American

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

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.

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

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

Men Never Do Evil So Completely And Cheerfully As When They Do It From Religious Conviction.

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

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

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

Those We Call The Ancients Were Really New In Everything.

Rivers Are Highways That Move On And Bear Us Whither We Wish To Go.

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

Any Unity Which Doesn't Have Its Origin In The Multitudes Is Tyranny.

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

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

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

To Doubt Is A Misfortune, But To Seek When In Doubt Is An Indispensable Duty. So He Who Doubts And Seeks Not Is At Once Unfortunate And Unfair.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Law, Without Force, Is Impotent.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Ugly Deeds Are Most Estimable When Hidden.

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

Do You Wish People To Think Well Of You? Don't Speak Well Of Yourself.

Chess Is The Gymnasium Of The Mind.

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.

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.

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

We Do Not Worry About Being Respected In Towns Through Which We Pass. But If We Are Going To Remain In One For A Certain Time, We Do Worry. How Long Does This Time Have To Be?

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

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

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

No Man Ever Believes With A True And Saving Faith Unless God Inclines His Heart; And No Man When God Does Incline His Heart Can Refrain From Believing.

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

Let Each Of Us Examine His Thoughts

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

How Can Anyone Lose Who Chooses To Become A Christian? If, When He Dies, There Turns Out To Be No God And His Faith Was In Vain, He Has Lost Nothing...if, However, There Is A God And A Heaven And A Hell. Then He Has Gained Heaven And His Skeptical Friends Have Lost Everything.

Lost Everything

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

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.

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.

Eloquence Is A Painting Of The Thoughts.

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

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

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

The More Intelligence One Has, The More People One Finds Original. Commonplace People See No Difference Between Men.

The Heart Has Its Reasons Of Which Reason Knows Nothing. We Feel It In A Thousand Things. I Say That The Heart Naturally Loves The Universal Being, And Naturally Loves Itself; And It Gives Itself To One Or The Other, And Hardens Itself Against One Or The Other, As It Chooses...it Is The Heart That Feels God, Not The Reason; This Is Faith.

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

Jurisdiction Is Not Given For The Sake Of The Judge, But For That Of The Litigant.

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

If God Does Not Exist, One Loses Nothing By Believing In Him Anyway, While If He Does Exist, One Stands To Lose Everything By Not Believing.

May God Never Abandon Me.

Continuous Eloquence Wearies.

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

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

Nature Confuses The Skeptics And Reason Confutes The Dogmatists

Love Has Reasons Which Reason Cannot Understand.

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.

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

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.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

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

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.

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.

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.

L'on A Beau Se Cacher A' Soi-me" Me, L'on Aime Toujours. We Vainly Conceal From Ourselves The Fact That We Are Always In Love.

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

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

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.

A Few Rules Include All That Is Necessary For The Perfection Of The Definitions, The Axioms, And The Demonstrations, And Consequently Of The Entire Method Of The Geometrical Proofs Of The Art Of Persuading.

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.

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

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

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

Perfect Clarity Would Profit The Intellect But Damage The Will.

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.

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.

It Is Not Good To Be Too Free. It Is Not Good To Have All One Wants.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Vanity Is So Anchored In The Heart Of Man That A Soldier, A Soldier's Servant, A Cook, A Porter Brags And Wishes To Have His Admirers. Even Philosophers Wish For Them. Those Who Write Against Vanity Want To Have The Glory Of Having Written Well; And Those Who Read It Desire The Glory Of Having Read It. I Who Write This Have Perhaps This Desire, And Perhaps Those Who Will Read It.

Man Is Neither Angel Nor Beast.

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

One Must Know Oneself. If This Does Not Serve To Discover Truth, It At Least Serves As A Rule Of Life And There Is Nothing Better.

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

A Jester, A Bad Character.

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

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.

Why God Has Instituted Prayer:— To Communicate To His Creatures The Dignity Of Causation.

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

There Is A God-shaped Vacuum In Every Heart.

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

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.

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.

Those Whom We Call Ancient Were Really New In All Things, And Properly Constituted The Infancy Of Mankind.

Eloquence Is The Painting Of Thought.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

An Advocate Who Has Been Well Paid In Advance Will Find The Cause He Is Pleading All The More Just.

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

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.

[unbelievers] Think They Have Made Great Efforts To Get At The Truth When They Have Spent A Few Hours In Reading Some Book Out Of Holy Scripture, And Have Questioned Some Cleric About The Truths Of The Faith. After That, They Boast That They Have Searched In Books And Among Men In Vain.

The Secrets Of Nature Are Concealed; Her Agency Is Perpetual, But We Do Not Always Discover Its Effects; Time Reveals Them From Age To Age; And Although She Is Always The Same In Herself, She Is Not Always Equally Well Known.

Good Deeds, When Concealed, Are The Most Admirable.

Just As I Do Not Know Where I Came From, So I Do Not Know Where I Am Going. All I Know Is That When I Leave This World I Shall Fall Forever Into Oblivion, Or Into The Hands Of An Angry God, Without Knowing Which Of The Two Will Be My Lot For Eternity. Such Is My State Of Mind, Full Of Weakness And Uncertainty. The Only Conclusion I Can Draw From All This Is That I Must Pass My Days Without A Thought Of Trying To Find Out What Is Going To Happen To Me.

We Do Not Rest Satisfied With The Present.... So Imprudent We Are That We Wander In The Times Which Are Not Ours And Do Not Thinkof The Only One Which Belongs To Us; And So Idle Are We That We Dream Of Those Times Which Are No More And Thoughtlessly Overlook That Which Alone Exists. For The Present Is Generally Painful To Us.

We 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.

Evil Is Easy, And Has Infinite Forms.

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

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.

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

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.

I Know Whom I Have Believed.

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

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.

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

You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand.

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.

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.

Our True Dignity Consists — In Thought. Thence We Must Derive Our Elevation, Not From Space Or Duration. Let Us Endeavor Then To Think Well; This Is The Principle Of Morals.

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

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!

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