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We Sail Within A Vast Sphere, Ever Drifting In Uncertainty, Driven From End To End. When We Think To Attach Ourselves To Any Pointand To Fasten To It, It Wavers And Leaves Us; And If We Follow It, It Eludes Our Grasp, Slips Past Us, And Vanishes For Ever. Nothing Stays For Us.

-Blaise Pascal

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We Sail Within A

Blaise Pascal

...

We Sail Within A Vast Sphere, Ever Drifting In Uncertainty, Driven From End To End. When We Think To Attach Ourselves To Any Pointand To Fasten To It, It Wavers And Leaves Us; And If We Follow It, It Eludes Our Grasp, Slips Past Us, And Vanishes For Ever. Nothing Stays For Us.

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More From Blaise Pascal

Look For The Truth, It Wants To Be Found.

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

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

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

Eloquence Is A Painting Of The Thoughts.

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

Good Deeds, When Concealed, Are The Most Admirable.

There Are Two Equally Dangerous Extremes-to Shut Reason Out, And To Let Nothing Else In.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Knowledge Has Two Extremes. The First Is The Pure Natural Ignorance In Which All Men Find Themselves At Birth. The Other Extreme Is That Reached By Great Minds, Who, Having Run Through All That Men Can Know, Find They Know Nothing, And Come Back Again To That Same Natural Ignorance From Which They Set Out; This Is A Learned Ignorance Which Is Conscious Of Itself.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

God Only Pours Out His Light Into The Mind After Having Subdued The Rebellion Of The Will By An Altogether Heavenly Gentleness Which Charms And Wins It.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Those We Call The Ancients Were Really New In Everything.

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.

There Are Hardly Any Truths Upon Which We Always Remain Agreed, And Still Fewer Objects Of Pleasure Which We Do Not Change Every Hour, I Do Not Know Whether There Is A Means Of Giving Fixed Rules For Adapting Discourse To The Inconstancy Of Our Caprices.

When Intuition And Logic Agree, You Are Always Right.

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

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

Lost Friendship

Lost Everything

Things Are Always At Their Best In Their Beginning.

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

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

If A Man Is Not Made For God, Why Is He Happy Only In God?

Nothing Gives Rest But The Sincere Search For Truth.

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!

Custom Determines What Is Agreeable.

The Property Of Power Is To Protect.

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

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.

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

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

Great And Small Suffer The Same Mishaps.

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.

A Town, A Landscape Are When Seen From Afar A Town And A Landscape; But As One Gets Nearer, There Are Houses, Trees, Tiles Leaves, Grasses, Ants, Legs Of Ants And So On To Infinity. All This Is Subsumed Under The Name Of Landscape.

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

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

Continuous Eloquence Is Tedious.

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

Wisdom Leads Us Back To Childhood.

We Run Carelessly To The Precipice, After We Have Put Something Before Us To Prevent Us Seeing It.

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

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

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

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

God Has Given Us Evidence Sufficiently Clear To Convince Those With An Open Heart And Mind.

It Is Incomprehensible That God Should Exist, And It Is Incomprehensible That He Should Not Exist.

If Our Condition Were Truly Happy, We Would Not Need Diversion From Thinking Of It In Order To Make Ourselves Happy.

Let Man Reawake And Consider What He Is Compared With The Reality Of Things; Regard Himself Lost In This Remote Corner Of Nature; And From The Tiny Cell Where He Lodges, To Wit The Universe, Weigh At Their True Worth Earth, Kingdoms, Towns, Himself. What Is A Man Face To Face With Infinity?

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Not Only Do We Know God By Jesus Christ Alone, But We Know Ourselves Only By Jesus Christ. We Know Life And Death Only Through Jesus Christ. Apart From Jesus Christ, We Do Not Know What Is Our Life, Nor Our Death, Nor God, Nor Ourselves.

I Bring You The Gift Of These Four Words: I Believe In You.

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

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

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.

Men Despise Religion. They Hate It And Are Afraid It May Be True. The Cure For This Is First To Show That Religion Is Not Contrary To Reason, But Worthy Of Reverence And Respect. Next Make It Attractive, Make Good Men Wish It Were True And Then Show That It Is.

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

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.

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

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

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.

All I Know Is That I Must Soon Die, But What I Know Least Is This Very Death Which I Cannot Escape.

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

Man's Greatness Lies In His Power Of Thought.

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

Faith Indeed Tells What The Senses Do Not Tell, But Not The Contrary Of What They See. It Is Above Them And Not Contrary To Them.

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.

Vanity Of Science. Knowledge Of Physical Science Will Not Console Me For Ignorance Of Morality In Time Of Affliction, But Knowledge Of Morality Will Always Console Me For Ignorance Of Physical Science.

Let Each Of Us Examine His Thoughts; He Will Find Them Wholly Concerned With The Past Or The Future. We Almost Never Think Of The Present, And If We Do Think Of It, It Is Only To See What Light Is Throws On Our Plans For The Future. The Present Is Never Our End. The Past And The Present Are Our Means, The Future Alone Our End. Thus We Never Actually Live, But Hope To Live, And Since We Are Always Planning How To Be Happy, It Is Inevitable That We Should Never Be So.

Our Nature Lies In Movement; Complete Calm Is Death.

Extremes Are For Us As If They Were Not, And As If We Were Not In Regard To Them; They Escape From Us, Or We 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.

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.

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.

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

It Is Of Dangerous Consequence To Represent To Man How Near He Is To The Level Of Beasts, Without Showing Him At The Same Time His Greatness. It Is Likewise Dangerous To Let Him See His Greatness Without His Meanness. It Is More Dangerous Yet To Leave Him Ignorant Of Either; But Very Beneficial That He Should Be Made Sensible Of Both.

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

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

Men Are So Necessarily Mad, That Not To Be Mad Would Amount To Another Form Of Madness.

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

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

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

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

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.

E? Loquence Quipersuade Par Douceur, Non Par Empire, En Tyran, Non En Roi. Eloquence Should Persuade Gently, Not By Force Or Like A Tyrant Or King.

Men Blaspheme What They Do Not Know.

What Can Be Seen On Earth Points To Neither The Total Absence Nor The Obvious Presence Of Divinity, But To The Presence Of A Hidden God. Everything Bears This Mark.

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

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

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.

Sneezing Absorbs All The Functions Of The Soul Just As Much As The [sexual] Act, But We Do Not Draw From It The Same Conclusions Against The Greatness Of Man, Because It Is Involuntary; Although We Bring It About, We Do So Involuntarily. It Is Not For The Sake Of The Thing In Itself But For Another End, And Is Therefore Not A Sign Of Man's Weakness, Or His Subjection To This Act.

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

By Thought I Embrace The Universe.

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

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.

If We Let Ourselves Believe That Man Began With Divine Grace, That He Forfeited This By Sin, And That He Can Be Redeemed Only By Divine Grace Through The Crucified Christ, Then We Shall Find Peace Of Mind Never Granted To Philosophers. He Who Cannot Believe Is Cursed, For He Reveals By His Unbelief That God Has Not Chosen To Give Him Grace.

Seeing Too Much To Deny And Too Little To Be Sure, I Am In A State To Be Pitied.

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

If There Is A God

Equality Of Possessions Is No Doubt Right, But, As Men Could Not Make Might Obey Right, They Have Made Right Obey Might.

If Ignorance Were Bliss, He'd Be A Blister

Ugly Deeds Are Most Estimable When Hidden.

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

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

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

We Never Love A Person, But Only Qualities.

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!

Imagination Magnifies Small Objects With Fantastic Exaggeration Until They Fill Our Soul, And With Bold Insolence Cuts Down Great Things To Its Own Size, As When Speaking Of God.

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

One Of The Greatest Artifices The Devil Uses To Engage Men In Vice And Debauchery, Is To Fasten Names Of Contempt On Certain Virtues, And Thus Fill Weak Souls With A Foolish Fear Of Passing For Scrupulous, Should They Desire To Put Them In Practice.

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

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

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?

The Imagination Enlarges Little Objects So As To Fill Our Souls With A Fantastic Estimate; And, With Rash Insolence, It Belittles The Great To Its Own Measure, As When Talking Of God.

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

Reflect On Death As In Jesus Christ, Not As Without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ It Is Dreadful, It Is Alarming, It Is The Terror Of Nature. In Jesus Christ It Is Fair And Lovely, It Is Good And Holy, It Is The Joy Of Saints.

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.

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

To Find Recreation In Amusements Is Not Happiness; For This Joy Springs From Alien And Extrinsic Sources, And Is Therefore Dependent Upon And Subject To Interruption By A Thousand Accidents, Which May Minister Inevitable Affliction.

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.

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

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.

Christianity Is Strange. It Bids Man Recognise That He Is Vile, Even Abominable, And Bids Him Desire To Be Like God. Without Such A Counterpoise, This Dignity Would Make Him Horribly Vain, Or This Humiliation Would Make Him Terribly Abject.

No One Is Offended At Not Seeing Everything; But One Does Not Like To Be Mistaken, And That Perhaps Arises From The Fact That Man Naturally Cannot See Everything, And That Naturally He Cannot Err In The Side He Looks At, Since The Perceptions Of Our Senses Are Always True.

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.

Man Is So Made That By Continually Telling Him He Is A Fool He Believes It, And By Continually Telling It To Himself He Makes Himself Believe It. For Man Holds An Inward Talk With Himself, Which It Pays Him To Regulate.

Man Governs Himself More By Impulse Than Reason

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

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

The World Is Satisfied With Words, Few Care To Dive Beneath The Surface.

Beneath The Surface

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

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

All The Trouble In The World Is Due To The Fact That Man Cannot Sit Still In A Room.

This Is What I See, And What Troubles Me. I Look On All Sides, And Everywhere I See Nothing But Obscurity. Nature Offers Me Nothing That Is Not A Matter Of Doubt And Disquiet.

For As Old Age Is That Period Of Life Most Remote From Infancy, Who Does Not See That Old Age In This Universal Man Ought Not To Be Sought In The Times Nearest His Birth, But In Those Most Remote From It?

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

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Inspirational Life

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.

Clarity Of Mind Means Clarity Of Passion, Too.

Dull Minds Are Never Either Intuitive Or Mathematical.

Mediocrity Makes The Most Of Its Native Possessions.

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

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.

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

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.

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

To Scorn Philosophy Is Truly To Philosophize.

A Jester, A Bad Character.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Man Who Knows God But Does Not Know His Own Misery, Becomes Proud. The Man Who Knows His Own Misery But Does Not Know God, Ends In Despair...the Knowledge Of Jesus Christ Constitutes The Middle Course Because In Him We Find Both God And Our Own Misery. Jesus Christ Is Therefore A God Whom We Approach Without Pride, And Before Whom We Humble Ourselves Without Despair.

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.

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.

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.

When One Does Not Love Too Much, One Does Not Love Enough.

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

Most Of Man's Trouble Comes From His Inability To Be Still.

We Only Consult The Ear Because The Heart Is Wanting.

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.

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

To Understand Is To Forgive.

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.

Rivers Are Roads That Move And Carry Us Whither We Wish To Go. [fr., Les Rivieres Sont Des Chemins Qui Marchant Et Qui Portent Ou L'on Veut Aller.]

Our Nature Consists In Motion; Complete Rest Is Death.

Faith Embraces Many Truths Which Seem To Contradict Each Other.

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

You Are In The Same Manner Surrounded With A Small Circle Of Persons... Full Of Desire. They Demand Of You The Benefits Of Desire... You Are Therefore Properly The King Of Desire. ...equal In This To The Greatest Kings Of The Earth... It Is Desire That Constitutes Their Power; That Is, The Possession Of Things That Men Covet.

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

The Fall Is An Offense To Human Reason, But Once Accepted, It Makes Perfect Sense Of The Human Condition.

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

Happiness Can Be Found Neither In Ourselves Nor In External Things, But In God And In Ourselves As United To Him.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

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

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