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We Need Not Have The Loftiest Mind To Understand That Here Is No Lasting And Real Satisfaction, That Our Pleasures Are Only Vanity, That Our Evils Are Infinite, And, Lastly, That Death, Which Threatens Us Every Moment, Must Infallibly Place Us Within A Few Years Under The Dreadful Necessity Of Being Forever Either Annihilated Or Unhappy.

-Blaise Pascal

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We Need Not Have

Blaise Pascal

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We Need Not Have The Loftiest Mind To Understand That Here Is No Lasting And Real Satisfaction, That Our Pleasures Are Only Vanity, That Our Evils Are Infinite, And, Lastly, That Death, Which Threatens Us Every Moment, Must Infallibly Place Us Within A Few Years Under The Dreadful Necessity Of Being Forever Either Annihilated Or Unhappy.

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The Majority Is The Best Way, Because It Is Visible, And Has Strength To Make Itself Obeyed. Yet It Is The Opinion Of The Least Able.

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.

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.

Nothing Is Thoroughly Approved But Mediocrity. The Majority Has Established This, And It Fixes Its Fangs On Whatever Gets Beyond It Either Way.

Man Is But A Reed, The Most Feeble Thing In Nature, But He Is A Thinking Reed.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

All The Excesses, All The Violence, And All The Vanity Of Great Men, Come From The Fact That They Know Not What They Are: It Being Difficult For Those Who Regard Themselves At Heart As Equal With All Men... For This It Is Necessary For One To Forget Himself, And To Believe That He Has Some Real Excellence Above Them, In Which Consists This Illusion That I Am Endeavoring To Discover To You.

Dull Minds Are Never Either Intuitive Or Mathematical.

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

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?

That A Religion May Be True, It Must Have Knowledge Of Our Nature.

If A Man Loves A Woman For Her Beauty, Does He Love Her? No; For The Smallpox, Which Destroys Her Beauty Without Killing Her, Causes His Love To Cease. And If Any One Loves Me For My Judgment Or My Memory, Does He Really Love Me? No; For I Can Lose These Qualities Without Ceasing To Be.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Are Some Who Speak Well And Write Badly. For The Place And The Audience Warm Them, And Draw From Their Minds More Than They Think Of Without That Warmth.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Books And Reading

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?

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

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

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.

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

Too Much Pleasure Disagrees With Us. Too Many Concords Are Annoying In Music; Too Many Benefits Irritate Us; We Wish To Have The Wherewithal To Overpay Our Debts.

Il Y A Deux Sortes D'esprits, L'un Ge Ome Trique, Et L'autre Que L'on Peut Appeler De Finesse. Le Premier A Des Vues Lentes, Dures Et Inflexibles; Mais Le Dernier A Une Souplesse De Pense E. There Are Two Kinds Of Mind, One Mathematical, The Other What One Might Call The Intuitive. The First Takes A Slow, Firm, Inflexible View, But The Latter Has Flexibility Of Thought.

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.

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

Meanings Receive Their Dignity From Words Instead Of Giving It To Them.

Quand On Voit Le Style Naturel, On Est Tout E Tonne Et Ravi, Car On S'attendait De Voir Un Auteur, Et On Trouve Un Homme. When We See A Natural Style We Are Quite Amazed And Delighted, Because We Expected To See An Author And Find A Man.

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

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

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.

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

Vanity Is But The Surface.

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.

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.

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.

The Incredulous Are The More Credulous. They Believe The Miracles Of Vespasian That They May Not Believe Those Of Moses. [fr., Incredules Les Plus Credules. Ils Croient Les Miracle De Vespasien, Pour Ne Pas Croire Ceux De Moise.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Human Life Is Thus Only An Endless Illusion. Men Deceive And Flatter Each Other. No One Speaks Of Us In Our Presence As He Does When We Are Gone. Society Is Based On Mutual Hypocrisy.

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.

Not To Be Mad Is Another Form Of Madness

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

Love Has Reasons Which Reason Cannot Understand.

And Is It Not Obvious That, Just As It Is A Crime To Disturb The Peace When Truth Reigns, It Is Also A Crime To Remain At Peace When The Truth Is Being Destroyed?

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

If You Believe In God You Are At No Disadvantage In This Life, And At Considerable Advantage In The Next. If You Do Not Believe, But Find In The Next That There Was A Next, You Are Most Unfortunate!

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

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.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

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?

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.

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

Different Meanings

Opinion Is The Queen Of The World.

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

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

Without Jesus Christ Man Must Be In Vice And Misery With Jesus Christ Man Is Free From Vice And Misery In Him Is All Our Virtue And All Our Happiness. Apart From Him There Is But Vice, Misery, Darkness, Death, Despair.

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

Concupiscence And Force Are The Source Of All Our Actions; Concupiscence Causes Voluntary Actions, Force Involuntary Ones.

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

The God Of The Infinite Is The God Of The Infinitesimal.

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.

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

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

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.

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

To Call A King "prince" Is Pleasing, Because It Diminishes His Rank.

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.

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.

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

All Our Reasoning Boils Down To Yielding To Sentiment.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

There Is A God Shaped Vacuum In The Heart Of Every Man Which Cannot Be Filled By Any Created Thing, But Only By God, The Creator, Made Known Through Jesus.

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

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

Righteous Living

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

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

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

The State Of Man Is Inconstancy, Ennui, Anxiety.

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.

I Know Whom I Have Believed.

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

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.

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

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

All The Good Maxims Which Are In The World Fail When Applied To One's Self.

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

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.

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

Curiosity Is Only Vanity. We Usually Only Want To Know Something So That We Can Talk About It.

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.

Men Seek Rest In A Struggle Against Difficulties; And When They Have Conquered These, Rest Becomes Insufferable.

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

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.

Mediocrity Makes The Most Of Its Native Possessions.

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

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.

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

The Finite Is Annihilated In The Presence Of The Infinite, And Becomes A Pure Nothing. So Our Spirit Before God, So Our Justice Before Divine Justice.

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.

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

If We Must Not Act Save On A Certainty, We Ought Not To Act On Religion, For It Is Not Certain. But How Many Things We Do On An Uncertainty, Sea Voyages, Battles!

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

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

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

No One Is Ignorant That There Are Two Avenues By Which Opinions Are Received Into The Soul, Which Are Its Two Principal Powers: The Understanding And The Will.

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

Excuse Me, Pray." Without That Excuse I Would Not Have Known There Was Anything Amiss.

Those Who Do Not Hate Their Own Selfishness And Regard Themselves As More Important Than The Rest Of The World Are Blind Because The Truth Lies Elsewhere

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

All Our Dignity Lies In Our Thoughts.

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.

The War Existing Between The Senses And Reason.

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.

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

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.

Le Nez De Cle Opa" Tre: S'il E U" T E Te Plus Court, Toute La Face De La Terre Aurait Change . Cleopatra'snose: If It Had Beenshorter The Whole Face Of The Earth Would Have Been Different.

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.

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

What Are Our Natural Principles But Principles Of Custom?

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

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

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

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

Since We Cannot Be Universal And Know All That Is To Be Known Of Everything, We Ought To Know A Little About Everything. For It Is Far Better To Know Something About Everything Than To Know All About One Thing. This Universality Is The Best. If We Can Have Both, Still Better; But If We Must Choose, We Ought To Choose The Former.

To Scorn Philosophy Is Truly To Philosophize.

At The Centre Of Every Human Being Is A God-shaped Vacuum Which Can Only Be Filled By Jesus Christ.

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

We Never Love A Person, But Only Qualities.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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

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.

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.

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

Our Own Interests Are Still An Exquisite Means For Dazzling Our Eyes Agreeably.

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

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

Continued Eloquence Is Wearisome.

We Must Know Where To Doubt, Where To Feel Certain, Where To Submit. He Who Does Not Do So, Understands Not The Force Of Reason.

No Religion Except Ours Has Taught That Man Is Born In Sin; None Of The Philosophical Sects Has Admitted It; None Therefore Has Spoken The Truth

Condition De L'homme: Inconstance, Ennui, Inquie Tude. Man's Condition. Inconstancy, Boredom, Anxiety.

Perfect Clarity Would Profit The Intellect But Damage The Will.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Continuous Eloquence Wearies.

Without [diversion] We Would Be In A State Of Weariness, And This Weariness Would Spur Us On To Seek A More Solid Means Of Escaping From It. But Diversion Amuses Us, And Leads Us Unconsciously To Death.

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.

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.

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.

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

What Is It, In Your Opinion, To Be A Great Nobleman? It Is To Be Master Of Several Objects That Men Covet, And Thus To Be Able To Satisfy The Wants And The Desires Of Many. It Is These Wants And These Desires That Attract Them Towards You, And That Make Them Submit To You: Were It Not For These, They Would Not Even Look At You; But They Hope, By These Services... To Obtain From You Some Part Of The Good Which They Desire, And Of Which They See That You Have The Disposal.

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