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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.

-Blaise Pascal

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Vanity Is So Anchored

Blaise Pascal

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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.

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Perfect Clarity Would Profit The Intellect But Damage The Will.

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.

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.

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

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.

Amusement That Is Excessive And Followed Only For Its Own Sake, Allures And Deceives Us.

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

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

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

People Are Generally Better Persuaded By The Reasons Which They Have Themselves Discovered Than By Those Which Have Come In To The Mind Of Others.

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

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.

Nobody Is Publicly Accepted As An Expert On Poetry Unless He Displays The Sign Of Poet, Mathematician, Etc., But Universal Men Want No Sign And Make Hardly Any Distinction Between The Crafts Of Poet And Embroiderer. Universal Men Are Not Called Poets Or Mathematicians, Etc. But They Are All These Things And Judges Of Them Too. No One Could Guess What They Are, And They Will Talk About Whatever Was Being Talked About When They Came In. One Quality Is Not More Noticeable In Them Than Another, Unless It Becomes Necessary To Put It Into Practice, And Then We Remember It.

The Sole Cause Of Man's Unhappiness Is That He Does Not Know How To Stay Quietly In His Room.

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

When We See A Natural Style, We Are Astonished And Charmed; For We Expected To See An Author, And We Find A Person.

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.

Console-toi, Tu Ne Me Chercherais Pas Si Tu Ne M'avais Trouve . Comfort Yourself.you Would Not Seek Me If You Had Not Found Me.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

It Is Certain That The Soul Is Either Mortal Or Immortal. The Decision Of This Question Must Make A Total Difference In The Principles Of Morals. Yet Philosophers Have Arranged Their Moral System Entirely Independent Of This. What An Extraordinary Blindness!

Habit Is A Second Nature, Which Destroys The First.

The Last Proceeding Of Reason Is To Recognize That There Is An Infinity Of Things Which Are Beyond It. There Is Nothing So Conformable To Reason As This Disavowal Of Reason.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Passion Cannot Be Beautiful Without Excess; One Either Loves Too Much Or Not Enough.

According To The Doctrine Of Chance, You Ought To Put Yourself To The Trouble Of Searching For The Truth; For If You Die Without Worshiping The True Cause, You Are Lost. "but," Say You, "if He Had Wished Me To Worship Him, He Would Have Left Me Signs Of His Will." He Has Done So; But You Neglect Them. Seek Them, Therefore; It Is Well Worth It.

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

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

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.

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 Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Frightens Me.

I Condemn Equally Those Who Choose To Praise Man, Those Who Choose To Condemn Him And Those Who Choose To Divert Themselves, And I Can Only Approve Of Those Who Seek With Groans.

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.

Apart From Jesus Christ, We Do Not Know What Is Our Life, Nor Our Death, Nor God, Nor Ourselves.

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.

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

I Maintain That, If Everyone Knew What Others Said About Him, There Would Not Be Four Friends In The World.

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

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

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

The Method Of Not Erring Is Sought By All The World. The Logicians Profess To Guide It, The Geometricians Alone Attain It, And Apart From Science, And The Imitations Of It, There Are No True Demonstrations.

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.

Thus So Wretched Is Man That He Would Weary Even Without Any Cause For Weariness... And So Frivolous Is He That, Though Full Of A Thousand Reasons For Weariness, The Least Thing, Such As Playing Billiards Or Hitting A Ball, Is Sufficient Enough To Amuse Him.

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

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.

You Gave Me Health That I Might Serve You; And So Often I Failed To Use My Good Health In Your Service. Now You Send Me Sickness In Order To Correct Me Grant That, Having Ignored The Things Of Spirit When My Body Was Vigorous, I May Now Enjoy Spiritual Sweetness While My Body Groans With Pain.

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.

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

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.

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

All That Remains

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

Continued Eloquence Is Wearisome.

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.

We Are Not Satisfied With Real Life; We Want To Live Some Imaginary Life In The Eyes Of Other People And To Seem Different From What We Actually Are.

Making Fun Of Philosophy Is Really Philosophising.

It Is Not Certain That Everything Is Uncertain.

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.

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

Righteous Living

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.

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

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

I Am In The Utmost Perplexity, Yand Have Wished A Hundred Times, That If There Is A A God, Nature Would Manifest Him Without Ambiguity, And That If There Is Not, Every Imaginary Sign Of His Existence Might Vanish : In Short, Let Nature Speak Distinctly, Or Be Totally Silent, And I Shall Know What Course To Take.

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

Lust Is The Source Of All Our Actions, And Humanity.

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

Anyone Who Does Not See The Vanity Of The World Is Very Vain Himself. So Who Does Not See It, Apart From Young People Whose Lives Are All Noise, Diversions, And Thoughts For The Future? But Take Away Their Diversion And You Will See Them Bored To Extinction. Then They Feel Their Nullity Without Recognizing It, For Nothing Could Be More Wretched Than To Be Intolerably Depressed As Soon As One Is Reduced To Introspection With No Means Of Diversion.

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

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

Eloquence Is The Painting Of Thought.

Imagination Decides Everything.

Continuous Eloquence Is Tedious.

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.

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.

We Only Consult The Ear Because The Heart Is Wanting.

There Is A God-shaped Hole In The Life Of Every Man.

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.

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

Let Man Then Contemplate The Whole Of Nature In Her Full And Grand Majesty... No Idea Approaches It. We May Enlarge Our Conceptions Beyond All Imaginable Space; We Only Produce Atoms In Comparison With The Reality Of Things. It Is An Infinite Sphere, The Center Of Which Is Everywhere, The Circumference Nowhere.

The Present Letter Is A Very Long One, Simply Because I Had No Leisure To Make It Shorter.

There Are Two Excesses: To Exclude Reason, To Admit Nothing But Reason. The Supreme Achievement Of Reason Is To Realise That There Is A Limit To Reason. Reason's Last Step Is The Recognition That There Are An Infinite Number Of Things Which Are Beyond It. It Is Merely Feeble If It Does Not Go As Far As To Realise That.

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.

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.

The Pagans Do Not Know God, And Love Only The Earth. The Jews Know The True God, And Love Only The Earth. The Christians Know The True God, And Do Not Love The Earth.

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.

The Property Of Power Is To Protect.

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.

[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.

If God Exists, Not Seeking God Must Be The Gravest Error Imaginable. If One Decides To Sincerely Seek For God And Doesn't Find God, The Lost Effort Is Negligible In Comparison To What Is At Risk In Not Seeking God In The First Place.

It Is The Conduct Of God, Who Disposes All Things Kindly, To Put Religion Into The Mind By Reason, And Into The Heart By Grace.

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.

Vanity Is But The Surface.

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

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.

Eloquence Is A Painting Of Thought; And Thus Those Who, After Having Painted It, Add Something More, Make A Picture Instead Of A Portrait.

There Are Two Kinds Of People One Can Call Reasonable: Those Who Serve God With All Their Heart Because They Know Him, And Those Who Seek Him With All Their Heart Because They Do Not Know Him.

What Are Our Natural Principles But Principles Of Custom?

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I Should Not Be A Christian But For The Miracles.

Justice And Power Must Be Brought Together, So That Whatever Is Just May Be Powerful, And Whatever Is Powerful May Be Just.

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.

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

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.

Christian Piety Annihilates The Egoism Of The Heart; Worldly Politeness Veils And Represses It.

Eloquence Is A Painting Of The Thoughts.

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

The Mind Naturally Makes Progress, And The Will Naturally Clings To Objects; So That For Want Of Right Objects, It Will Attach Itself To Wrong Ones.

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.

L'homme N'est Qu'un Sujet Plein D'erreur, Naturelle Et Ineffa C° Able Sans La Gra" Ce. Man Is Nothing But A Subject Full Of Natural Error That Cannot Be Eradicated Except Through Grace.

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

Human Beings Do Not Know Their Place And Purpose. They Have Fallen From Their True Place, And Lost Their True Purpose. They Search Everywhere For Their Place And Purpose, With Great Anxiety. But They Cannot Find Them Because They Are Surrounded By Darkness.

Let Us Weigh The Gain And The Loss, In Wagering That God Is. Consider These Alternatives: If You Win, You Win All, If You Lose You Lose Nothing. Do Not Hesitate, Then, To Wager That He Is.

Lost Friendship

There Is A Lot Of Difference Between Tempting And Leading Into Error. God Tempts But Does Not Lead Into Error. To Tempt Is To Provide Opportunities For Us To Do Certain Things If We Do Not Love God, But Putting Us Under No Necessity To Do So. To Lead Into Error Is To Compel A Man Necessarily To Conclude And Follow A Falsehood.

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

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.]

Nothing Is Surer Than That The People Will Be Weak.

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

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

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

Good Deeds, When Concealed, Are The Most Admirable.

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.

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

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?

All This Visible World Is But An Imperceptible Point In The Ample Bosom Of Nature.

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.

Man's True Nature Being Lost, Everything Becomes His Nature; As, His True Good Being Lost, Everything Becomes His Good.

Lost Friendship

Lost Everything

We View Things Not Only From Different Sides, But With Different Eyes; We Have No Wish To Find Them Alike.

If I Believe In God And Life After Death And You Do Not, And If There Is No God, We Both Lose When We Die. However, If There Is A God, You Still Lose And I Gain Everything.

If There Is A God

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

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.

True Eloquence Scorns Eloquence.

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

It Is Impossible On Reasonable Grounds To Disbelieve Miracles.

Things Are Always At Their Best In Their Beginning.

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

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

Some Vices Only Lay Hold Of Us By Means Of Others, And These, Like Branches, Fall On Removal Of The Trunk.

Contradiction Is Not A Sign Of Falsity, Nor The Lack Of Contradiction A Sign Of Truth.

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

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

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.

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.

En Un Mot, L'homme Conna|"t Qu'il Est Mise Rable: Il Est Donc Mise Rable, Puisqu'il L'est; Mais Il Est Bien Grand, Puisqu'il Le Conna|"t. In One Word, Man Knows That He Is Miserable And Therefore He Is Miserable Because He Knows It; But He Is Also Worthy, Because He Knows His Condition.

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

Knowing God Without Knowing Our Own Wretchedness Makes For Pride. Knowing Our Own Wretchedness Without Knowing God Makes For Despair. Knowing Jesus Christ Strikes The Balance Because He Shows Us Both God And Our Own Wretchedness.

Religion Is So Great A Thing That It Is Right That Those Who Will Not Take The Trouble To Seek It If It Be Obscure, Should Be Deprived Of It.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

It Is The Heart Which Perceives God And Not The Reason. That Is What Faith Is: God Perceived By The Heart, Not By The Reason.

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.

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.

In Difficult Times Carry Something Beautiful In Your Heart.

Difficult Times

Man Is So Made That If He Is Told Often Enough That He Is A Fool He Believes It.

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

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

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

Faith Is Different From Proof; The Latter Is Human, The Former Is A Gift From God.

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

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

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

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.

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.

It Is Certain That Those Who Have The Living Faith In Their Hearts See At Once That All Existence Is None Other Than The Work Of The God Whom They Adore. But For Those In Whom This Light Is Extinguished, [if We Were To Show Them Our Proofs Of The Existence Of God] Nothing Is More Calculated To Arouse Their Contempt. . . .

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.

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

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.

Philosophers.-we Are Full Of Things Which Take Us Out Of Ourselves.

One Must Have Deeper Motives And Judge Everything Accordingly, But Go On Talking Like An Ordinary Person.

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