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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.

-Blaise Pascal

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We Do Not Content

Blaise Pascal

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Man Is Neither Angel Nor Beast.

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.

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

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.

No One Is Discontented At Not Being A King Except A Discrowned King ... Unhappiness Almost Invariably Indicates The Existence Of A Road Not Taken, A Talent Undeveloped, A Self Not Recognized.

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

Something Incomprehensible Is Not For That Reason Less 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.

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

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.

Eloquence Is The Painting Of Thought.

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.

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

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.

We Are Usually Convinced More Easily By Reasons We Have Found Ourselves Than By Those Which Have Occurred To Others.

Who Dispenses Reputation? Who Makes Us Respect And Revere Persons, Works, Laws, The Great? Who But This Faculty Of Imagination? All The Riches Of The Earth Are Inadequate Without Its Approval.

I Can Readily Conceive Of A Man Without Hands Or Feet; And I Could Conceive Of Him Without A Head, If Experience Had Not Taught Me That By This He Thinks, Thought Then, Is The Essence Of Man, And Without This We Cannot Conceive Of Him.

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

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!

The Consciousness Of The Falsity Of Present Pleasures, And The Ignorance Of The Vanity Of Absent Pleasures, Cause Inconstancy.

Kind Words Produce Their Images On Men's Souls.

The Only Thing Which Consoles For Our Miseries Is Diversion, And Yet This Is The Greatest Of Our Miseries. For It Is This Which Principally Hinders Us From Reflecting Upon Ourselves And Which Makes Us Imperceptibly Ruin Ourselves.

Reflecting Upon

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.

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

Different Meanings

However Vast A Man's Spiritual Resources, He Is Capable Of But One Great Passion.

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

The Strength Of A Man's Virtue Should Not Be Measured By His Special Exertions, But By His Habitual Acts.

The Multitude Which Is Not Brought To Act As A Unity, Is Confusion. That Unity Which Has Not Its Origin In The Multitude Is Tyranny.

Good Deeds, When Concealed, Are The Most Admirable.

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

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

To Ridicule Philosophy Is Really To Philosophize.

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

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.

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

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.

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

When We Would Show Any One That He Is Mistaken, Our Best Course Is To Observe On What Side He Considers The Subject,--for His View Of If Is Generally Right On This Side,--and Admit To Him That He Is Right So Far. He Will Be Satisfied With This Acknowledgment, That He Was Not Wrong In His Judgment, But Only Inadvertent In Not Looking At The Whole Case.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

All Our Life Passes In This Way: We Seek Rest By Struggling Against Certain Obstacles, And Once They Are Overcome, Rest Proves Intolerable Because Of The Boredom It Produces.

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.

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

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

All Men Have Happiness As Their Object: There Is No Exception. However Different The Means They Employ, They All Aim At The Same End.

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.

In Difficult Times Carry Something Beautiful In Your Heart.

Difficult Times

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I Can Well Conceive A Man Without Hands, Feet, Head. But I Cannot Conceive Man Without Thought; He Would Be A Stone Or A Brute.

We Are So Presumptuous That We Should Like To Be Known All Over The World, Even By People Who Will Only Come When We Are No More. Such Is Our Vanity That The Good Opinion Of Half A Dozen Of The People Around Us Gives Us Pleasure And Satisfaction.

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.

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

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

Everything That Is Incomprehensible Does Not, However, Cease To Exist.

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

Things Are Always At Their Best In Their Beginning.

Fashion Is A Tyrant From Which Nothing Frees Us. We Must Suit Ourselves To Its Fantastic Tastes. But Being Compelled To Live Under Its Foolish Laws, The Wise Man Is Never The First To Follow, Nor The Last To Keep It.

Ugly Deeds Are Most Estimable When Hidden.

All The Dignity Of Man Consists In Thought. Thought Is Therefore By Its Nature A Wonderful And Incomparable Thing. It Must Have Strange Defects To Be Contemptible. But It Has Such, So That Nothing Is More Ridiculous. How Great It Is In Its Nature! How Vile It Is In Its Defects! But What Is This Thought? How Foolish It Is!

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

Righteous Living

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

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

Our Nature Lies In Movement; Complete Calm Is Death.

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

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.

All Of Our Miseries Prove Our Greatness. They Are The Miseries Of A Dethroned Monarch.

There Are Three Means Of Believing--by Inspiration, By Reason, And By Custom. Christianity, Which Is The Only Rational Institution, Does Yet Admit None For Its Sons Who Do Not Believe By Inspiration. Nor Does It Injure Reason Or Custom, Or Debar Them Of Their Proper Force; On The Contrary, It Directs Us To Open Our Minds By The Proofs Of The Former, And To Confirm Our Minds By The Authority Of The Latter.

Nothing Is So Conformable To Reason As To Disavow Reason.

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

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

The Weather And My Mood Have Little Connection. I Have My Foggy And My Fine Days Within Me; My Prosperity Or Misfortune Has Little To Do With The Matter.

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.

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.

There Is Enough Light For Those Who Only Desire To See, And Enough Obscurity For Those Who Have A Contrary Disposition

Justice Is What Is Established; And Thus All Our Established Laws Will Necessarily Be Regarded As Just Without Examination, Since They Are Established.

Our Reason Is Always Disappointed By The Inconstancy Of Appearances.

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

Continuous Eloquence Wearies.

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.

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

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.

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.

Those Who Write Against Vanity Want The Glory Of Having Written Well, And Their Readers The Glory Of Reading Well, And I Who Write This Have The Same Desire, As Perhaps Those Who Read This Have Also.

Opinion Is The Queen Of The World.

If It Is An Extraordinary Blindness To Live Without Investigating What We Are, It Is A Terrible One To Live An Evil Life, While Believing In God

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

In Order To Enter Into A Real Knowledge Of Your Condition, Consider It In This Image: A Man Was Cast By A Tempest Upon An Unknown Island, The Inhabitants Of Which Were In Trouble To Find Their King, Who Was Lost; And Having A Strong Resemblance Both In Form And Face To This King, He Was Taken For Him, And Acknowledged In This Capacity By All The People.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Generally We Are Occupied Either With The Miseries Which Now We Feel, Or With Those Which Threaten; And Even When We See Ourselves Sufficiently Secure From The Approach Of Either, Still Fretfulness, Though Unwarranted By Either Present Or Expected Affliction, Fails Not To Spring Up From The Deep Recesses Of The Heart, Where Its Roots Naturally Grow, And To Fill The Soul With Its Poison.

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...?

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.

Great And Small Suffer The Same Mishaps.

When We Do Not Know The Truth Of A Thing, It Is Good That There Should Exist A Common Error Which Determines The Mind Of Man, As, For Example, The Moon, To Which Is Attributed The Change Of Seasons, The Progress Of Diseases, Etc. For The Chief Malady Of Man Is A Restless Curiosity About Things Which He Cannot Understand; And It Is Not So Bad For Him To Be In Error As To Be Curious To No Purpose.

The 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.

Unless We Love The Truth We Cannot Know It.

Truth And Falsehood

Truly It Is An Evil To Be Full Of Faults; But It Is A Still Greater Evil To Be Full Of Them And To Be Unwilling To Recognize Them, Since That Is To Add The Further Fault Of A Voluntary Illusion.

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

That Which Makes Us Go So Far For Love Is That We Never Think That We Might Have Need Of Anything Besides That Which We Love.

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

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.

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.

God Is, Or He Is Not." But To Which Side Shall We Incline? Reason Can Decide Nothing Here. There Is An Infinite Chaos Which Separated Us. A Game Is Being Played At The Extremity Of This Infinite Distance Where Heads Or Tails Will Turn Up. What Will You Wager?

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

We Should Seek The Truth Without Hesitation; And, If We Refuse It, We Show That We Value The Esteem Of Men More Than The Search For Truth.

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

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.

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

The Eternal Silence Of These Infinite Spaces Frightens Me.

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.

To Deny, To Believe, And To Doubt Well, Are To A Man What The Race Is To A Horse.

Nature, Which Alone Is Good, Is Wholly Familiar And Common.

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

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.

The Last Act Is Bloody, However Pleasant All The Rest Of The Play Is: A Little Earth Is Thrown At Last Upon Our Head, And That Is The End Forever.

Clarity Of Mind Means Clarity Of Passion, Too; This Is Why A Great And Clear Mind Loves Ardently And Sees Distinctly What It Loves.

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.

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

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

What A Strange Vanity Painting Is; It Attracts Admiration By Resembling The Original, We Do Not Admire.

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

Custom Creates The Whole Of Equity, For The Simple Reason That It Is Accepted.

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.

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

When I Have Occasionally Set Myself To Consider The Different Distractions Of Men, The Pains And Perils To Which They Expose Themselves I Have Discovered That All The Unhappiness Of Men Arises From One Single Fact, That They Cannot Stay Quietly In Their Own Chamber.

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

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.

Law, Without Force, Is Impotent.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

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

Who Can Doubt That We Exist Only To Love? Disguise It, In Fact, As We Will, We Love Without Intermission... We Live Not A Moment Exempt From Its Influence.

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.

By Space The Universe Encompasses And Swallows Me Up Like An Atom; By Thought I Comprehend The World.

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

No Animal Admires Another Animal.

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.

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

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

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

Each One Is All In All To Himself; For Being Dead, All Is Dead To Him.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We Think Very Little Of Time Present; We Anticipate The Future, As Being Too Slow, And With A View To Hasten It Onward, We Recall The Past To Stay It As Too Swiftly Gone. We Are So Thoughtless, That We Thus Wander Through The Hours Which Are Not Here, Regardless Only Of The Moment That Is Actually Our Own.

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

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

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.

The Arithmetical Machine Produces Effects That Approach Nearer To Thought Than All The Actions Of Animals. But It Does Nothing That Would Enable Us To Attribute Will To It, As To The Animals.

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

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

Man Is Full Of Desires: He Loves Only Those Who Can Satisfy Them All. "this Man Is A Good Mathematician," Someone Will Say. But I Have No Concern For Mathematics; He Would Take Me For A Proposition. "that One Is A Good Soldier." He Would Take Me For A Besieged Town. I Need, That Is To Say, A Decent Man Who Can Accommodate Himself To All My Desires In A General Sort Of Way.

When We See An Effect Happen Always In The Same Manner, We Infer That It Takes Place By A Natural Necessity; As, For Instance, That The Sun Will Rise To Morrow; But Nature Often Deceives Us, And Will Not Submit To Its Own Rules.

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

The Married Should Not Forget That To Speak Of Love Begets Love.

If We Regulate Our Conduct According To Our Own Convictions, We May Safely Disregard The Praise Or Censure Of Others.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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