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Those Who Profess Contempt For Men, And Put Them On A Level With Beasts, Yet Wish To Be Admired And Believed By Men, And Contradict Themselves By Their Own Feelings--their Nature, Which Is Stronger Than All, Convincing Them Of The Greatness Of Man More Forcibly Than Reason Convinces Them Of His Baseness.

-Blaise Pascal

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Those Who Profess Contempt

Blaise Pascal

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Those Who Profess Contempt For Men, And Put Them On A Level With Beasts, Yet Wish To Be Admired And Believed By Men, And Contradict Themselves By Their Own Feelings--their Nature, Which Is Stronger Than All, Convincing Them Of The Greatness Of Man More Forcibly Than Reason Convinces Them Of His Baseness.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

Men Blaspheme What They Do Not Know.

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.

St. Augustine Teaches Us That There Is In Each Man A Serpent, An Eve, And An Adam. Our Senses And Natural Propensities Are The Serpent; The Excitable Desire Is The Eve; And Reason Is The Adam. Our Nature Tempts Us Perpetually; Criminal Desire Is Often Excited; But Sin Is Not Completed Till Reason Consents.

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

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.

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.

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

Which Is The More Believable Of The Two, Moses Or China?

The Mind Of The Greatest Man On Earth Is Not So Independent Of Circumstances As Not To Feel Inconvenienced By The Merest Buzzing Noise About Him; It Does Not Need The Report Of A Cannon To Disturb His Thoughts. The Creaking Of A Vane Or A Pully Is Quite Enough. Do Not Wonder That He Reasons Ill Just Now; A Fly Is Buzzing By His Ear; It Is Quite Enough To Unfit Him For Giving Good Counsel.

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

Law, Without Force, Is Impotent.

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.

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.

The Only Shame Is To Have None.

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.

The Present Is Never The Mark Of Our Designs. We Use Both Past And Present As Our Means And Instruments, But The Future Only As Our Object And Aim.

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

Il Est Non Seulement Impossible, Mais Inutile De Conna|"tre Dieu Sans Je Sus-christ. It Is Not Only Impossible, But Also Useless To Recognize God Without Jesus.

I Have Spent Much Time In The Study Of The Abstract Sciences; But The Paucity Of Persons With Whom You Can Communicate On Such Subjects Disgusted Me With Them. When I Began To Study Man, I Saw That These Abstract Sciences Are Not Suited To Him, And That In Diving Into Them, I Wandered Farther From My Real Object Than Those Who Knew Them Not, And I Forgave Them For Not Having Attended To These Things. I Expected Then, However, That I Should Find Some Companions In The Study Of Man, Since It Was So Specifically A Duty. I Was In Error. There Are Fewer Students Of Man Than Of Geometry.

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

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.

We Are Only Falsehood, Duplicity, Contradiction; We Both Conceal And Disguise Ourselves From Ourselves.

Look For The Truth, It Wants To Be Found.

No Animal Admires Another Animal.

Parents Fear The Destruction Of Natural Affection In Their Children. What Is This Natural Principle So Liable To Decay? Habit Is A Second Nature, Which Destroys The First. Why Is Not Custom Nature? I Suspect That This Nature Itself Is But A First Custom, As Custom Is A Second Nature.

Our Natures Lie In Motion, Without Which We Die.

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

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

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

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

Nothing Gives Rest But The Sincere Search For Truth.

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

It Is Not Certain That Everything Is Uncertain.

To Be Mistaken In Believing That The Christian Religion Is True Is No Great Loss To Anyone; But How Dreadful To Be Mistaken In Believing It To Be False!

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.

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.

Extremes Are For Us As Though They Were Not, And We Are Not Within Their Notice. They Escape Us, Or We Them. This Is Our True State; This Is What Makes Us Incapable Of Certain Knowledge And Of Absolute Ignorance... This Is Our Natural Condition, And Yet Most Contrary To Our Inclination; We Burn With Desire To Find Solid Ground And An Ultimate Sure Foundation Whereon To Build A Tower Reaching To The Infinite. But Our Whole Groundwork Cracks, And The Earth Opens To Abysses.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

To Ridicule Philosophy Is Really To Philosophize.

Mediocrity Makes The Most Of Its Native Possessions.

Let Each Of Us Examine His Thoughts

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

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

Those Who Profess Contempt For Men, And Put Them On A Level With Beasts, Yet Wish To Be Admired And Believed By Men, And Contradict Themselves By Their Own Feelings--their Nature, Which Is Stronger Than All, Convincing Them Of The Greatness Of Man More Forcibly Than Reason Convinces Them Of His Baseness.

A Jester, A Bad Character.

Dull Minds Are Never Either Intuitive Or Mathematical.

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

What Part Of Us Feels Pleasure? Is It Our Hand, Our Arm, Our Flesh, Or Our Blood? It Must Obviously Be Something Immaterial.

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.

I Have Made This Letter Longer Than Usual, Only Because I Have Not Had The Time To Make It Shorter.

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

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

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.

Without The Knowledge Of Our Wretchedness, The Knowledge Of God Creates Pride. With It, The Knowledge Of God Creates Despair. The Knowledge Of Christ Offers A Third Way, Because In Him We Find Both God And Our Wretchedness.

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.

Eloquence Is A Way Of Saying Things In Such A Way, First, That Those To Whom We Speak May Listen To Them Without Pain And With Pleasure, And Second, That They Feel Themselves Interested, So That Self-love Leads Them More Willingly To Reflection Upon It.

Necessity, That Great Refuge And Excuse For Human Frailty, Breaks Through All Law; And He Is Not To Be Accounted In Fault Whose Crime Is Not The Effect Of Choice, But Force.

Imagination Decides Everything.

The Art Of Revolutionizing And Overturning States Is To Undermine Established Customs, By Going Back To Their Origin, In Order To Mark Their Want Of Justice.

We Sail Within A Vast Sphere, Ever Drifting In Uncertainty, Driven From End To End.

What A Vast Difference There Is Between Knowing God And Loving Him.

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.

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

If We Examine Our Thoughts, We Shall Find Them Always Occupied With The Past Or The Future.

Love Has No Age As It Is Always Renewing Itself.

Wedding Anniversary

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

To Scorn Philosophy Is Truly To Philosophize.

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

Admiration Spoils All From Infancy.

To Go Beyond The Bounds Of Moderation Is To Outrage Humanity. The Greatness Of The Human Soul Is Shown By Knowing How To Keep Within Proper Bounds. There Are Two Equally Dangerous Extremes- To Shut Reason Out, And Not To Let Nothing In.

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

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

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

Man Governs Himself More By Impulse Than Reason

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

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

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

The Struggle Alone Pleases Us, Not The Victory.

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

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

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.

Look Somewhere Else For Someone Who Can Follow You In Your Researches About Numbers. For My Part, I Confess That They Are Far Beyond Me, And I Am Competent Only To Admire Them.

Noble Deeds That Are Concealed Are Most Esteemed.

Deeds And Words

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.

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

If We Dreamed The Same Thing Every Night, It Would Affect Us Much As The Objects We See Every Day. And If A Common Workman Were Sure To Dream Every Night For Twelve Hours That He Was A King, I Believe He Would Be Almost As Happy As A King Who Should Dream Every Night For Twelve Hours On End That He Was A Common Workman.

The 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.

Man Lives Between The Infinitely Large And The Infinitely Small.

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

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.

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 Do Not Weary Of Eating And Sleeping Every Day, For Hunger And Sleepiness Recur. Without That We Should Weary Of Them. So, Without The Hunger For Spiritual Things, We Weary Of Them. Hunger After Righteousness--the Eighth Beatitude.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When We Read Too Fast Or Too Slowly, We Understand Nothing.

Books And Reading

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.

Brave Deeds Are Wasted When Hidden.

The Gist Is That Good And Evil Are Foreordained. What Is Foreordained Comes Necessarily To Be After A Prior Act Of Divine Volition...rather, Everything Small And Large Is Written And Comes To Be In A Known And Expected Measure.

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

There Are People Who Lie Simply For The Sake Of Lying.

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

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.

Silence Is The Greatest Persecution; Never Do The Saints Keep Themselves Silent.

Thought Makes The Whole Dignity Of Man; Therefore Endeavor To Think Well, That Is The Only Morality.

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.

Pride Counterbalances All Our Miseries, For It Either Hides Them, Or, If It Discloses Them, Boasts Of That Disclosure. Pride Has Such A Thorough Possession Of Us, Even In The Midst Of Our Miseries And Faults, That We Are Prepared To Sacrifice Life With Joy, If It May But Be Talked Of.

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.

What Matters It That Man Should Have A Little More Knowledge Of The Universe? If He Has It, He Gets Little Higher. Is He Not Always Infinitely Removed From The End, And Is Not The Duration Of Our Life Equally Removed From Eternity, Even If It Lasts Ten Years Longer?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

The Property Of Power Is To Protect.

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

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.

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

Let Us Now Speak According To Natural Lights. If There Is A God, He Is Infinitely Incomprehensible. . . . We Are Then Incapable Of Knowing Of Either What He Is Or If He Is. . . .

If There Is A God

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.

Death Itself Is Less Painful When It Comes Upon Us Unawares Than The Bare Contemplation Of It, Even When Danger Is Far Distant.

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.

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.

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.

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

All Mankind's Unhappiness Derives From One Thing: His Inability To Know How To Remain In Repose In One Room.

Beauty Is A Harmonious Relation Between Something In Our Nature And The Quality Of The Object Which Delights Us.

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

Continued Eloquence Is Wearisome.

Chance Gives Rise To Thoughts, And Chance Removes Them; No Art Can Keep Or Acquire Them.

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.

We Feel Neither Extreme Heat Nor Extreme Cold; Qualities That Are In Excess Are So Much At Variance With Our Feelings That They Are Impalpable: We Do Not Feel Them, Though We Suffer From Their Effects.

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.

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

When A Soldier Complains Of His Hard Life (or A Labourer, Etc.) Try Giving Him Nothing To Do.

Custom Determines What Is Agreeable.

There Are Only Two Kinds Of Men: The Righteous Who Think They Are Sinners And The Sinners Who Think They Are Righteous.

Righteous Living

What Are Our Natural Principles But Principles Of Custom?

Earnestness Is Enthusiasm Tempered By Reason.

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.

Just As All Things Speak About God To Those That Know Him, And Reveal Him To Those That Love Him, They Also Hide Him From All Those That Neither Seek Nor Know Him.

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.

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.

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

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

How Vain Painting Is, Exciting Admiration By Its Resemblance To Things Of Which We Do Not Admire The Originals.

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

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.

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

Inspirational Life

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

Our Soul Is Cast Into A Body, Where It Finds Number, Time, Dimension. Thereupon It Reasons, And Calls This Nature Necessity, And Can Believe Nothing Else.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

Accomplish Nothing

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

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.

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 Eternal Being Is Forever If He Is At All.

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.

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.

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.

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

When We Wish To Correct With Advantage, And To Show Another That He Errs, We Must Notice From What Side He Views The Matter, For On That Side It Is Usually True.

Opinion Is The Queen Of The World.

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.

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.

If We Do Not Know Ourselves To Be Full Of Pride, Ambition, Lust, Weakness, Misery, And Injustice, We Are Indeed Blind. And If, Knowing This, We Do Not Desire Deliverance, What Can We Say Of A Man...?

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.

The Christian's God Does Not Merely Consist Of A God Who Is The Author Of Mathematical Truths And The Order Of The Elements. The God Of Abraham, The God Of Isaac, The God Of Jacob, The God Of The Christians, Is A God Of Love And Consolation.

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

In Difficult Times Carry Something Beautiful In Your Heart.

Difficult Times

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

In Faith There Is Enough Light For Those Who Want To Believe And Enough Shadows To Blind Those Who Don't.

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

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

Little Things Console Us Because Little Things Afflict Us.

Those We Call The Ancients Were Really New In Everything.

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