Background Image

...

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.

-Blaise Pascal

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

What Is It, In

Blaise Pascal

...

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.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Blaise Pascal

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The More I See Of Mankind, The More I Prefer My Dog.

We Desire Truth, And Find Within Ourselves Only Uncertainty. We Seek Happiness, And Find Only Misery And Death. We Cannot But Desire Truth And Happiness, And Are Incapable Of Certainty Or Happiness.

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.

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

It Is A Dangerous Experiment To Call In Gratitude As An Ally To Love. Love Is A Debt Which Inclination Always Pays, Obligation Never.

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

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.

Small Minds Are Concerned With The Extraordinary, Great Minds With The Ordinary.

Ordinary Extraordinary

Let Us, Then, Take Our Compass; We Are Something, And We Are Not Everything. The Nature Of Our Existence Hides From Us The Knowledge Of First Beginnings Which Are Born Of The Nothing; And The Littleness Of Our Being Conceals From Us The Sight Of The Infinite. Our Intellect Holds The Same Position In The World Of Thought As Our Body Occupies In The Expanse Of Nature.

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

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

Love Has No Age As It Is Always Renewing Itself.

Wedding Anniversary

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

La Chose La Plus Importante A' Toute La Vie Est Le Choix Du Me Tier: Le Hasard En Dispose. The Most Important Thing In Life Is To Choose A Profession: Chance Arranges For That.

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

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

A Little Thing Comforts Us Because A Little Thing Afflicts Us.

Our Senses Will Not Admit Anything Extreme. Too Much Noise Confuses Us, Too Much Light Dazzles Us, Too Great Distance Or Nearness Prevents Vision, Too Great Prolixity Or Brevity Weakens An Argument, Too Much Pleasure Gives Pain, Too Much Accordance Annoys.

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.

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

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

If There Is A God

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Good Deeds, When Concealed, Are The Most Admirable.

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

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

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

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.

Continued Eloquence Is Wearisome.

No Animal Admires Another Animal.

Habit Is A Second Nature, Which Destroys The First.

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

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

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

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.

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

Reverend Fathers, My Letters Did Not Usually Follow Each Other At Such Close Intervals, Nor Were They So Long.... This One Would Not Be So Long Had I But The Leisure To Make It Shorter.

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

I Should Not Be A Christian But For The Miracles.

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

In Proportion As Our Own Mind Is Enlarged We Discover A Greater Number Of Men Of Originality. Commonplace People See No Difference Between One Man And Another.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Custom Determines What Is Agreeable.

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!

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.

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.

The Mind Must Not Be Forced; Artificial And Constrained Manners Fill It With Foolish Presumption, Through Unnatural Elevation And Vain And Ridiculous Inflation, Instead Of Solid And Vigorous Nutriment.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Lord, Help Me To Do Great Things As Though They Were Little, Since I Do Them With Your Power; And Little Things As Though They Were Great, Since I Do Them In Your Name!

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

Earnestness Is Enthusiasm Tempered By Reason.

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.

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.

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

Imagination Decides Everything.

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.

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

Nature Has Made All Her Truths Independent Of One Another. Our Art Makes One Dependent On The Other. But This Is Not Natural. Each Keeps Its Own Place.

That We Must Love One God Only Is A Thing So Evident That It Does Not Require Miracles To Prove It.

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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

Discourses On Humility Are A Source Of Pride In The Vain And Of Humility In The Humble.

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.

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

Beneath The Surface

To Ridicule Philosophy Is Truly Philosophical. [fr., Se Moquer De La Philosophie C'est Vraiment Philosophe.]

Nature Imitates Herself. A Grain Thrown Into Good Ground Brings Forth Fruit; A Principle Thrown Into A Good Mind Brings Forth Fruit. Everything Is Created And Conducted By The Same Master-the Root, The Branch, The Fruits-the Principles, The Consequences.

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.

If Magistrates Had True Justice, And If Physicians Had The True Art Of Healing, They Would Have No Occasion For Square Caps; The Majesty Of These Sciences Would Itself Be Venerable Enough.

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.

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.]

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

By Thought I Embrace The Universe.

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.

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.

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

I Would Have Far More Fear Of Being Mistaken, And Of Finding That The Christian Religion Was True, Than Of Not Being Mistaken In Believing It True.

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

Lost Friendship

Lost Everything

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Our Reason Is Always Disappointed By The Inconstancy Of Appearances.

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

It Is Good To Be Tired And Wearied By The Futile Search After The True Good, That We May Stretch Out Our Arms To The Redeemer.

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.

Those We Call The Ancients Were Really New In Everything.

Something Incomprehensible Is Not For That Reason Less Real.

There Are Only Three Types Of People; Those Who Have Found God And Serve Him; Those Who Have Not Found God And Seek Him, And Those Who Live Not Seeking, Or Finding Him. The First Are Rational And Happy; The Second Unhappy And Rational, And The Third Foolish And Unhappy.

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

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

Our Imagination So Magnifies This Present Existence, By The Power Of Continual Reflection On It, And So Attenuates Eternity, By Not Thinking Of It At All, That We Reduce An Eternity To Nothingness, And Expand A Mere Nothing To An Eternity; And This Habit Is So Inveterately Rooted In Us That All The Force Of Reason Cannot Induce Us To Lay It Aside.

Whilst In Speaking Of Human Things, We Say That It Is Necessary To Know Them Before We Love Can Them. The Saints On The Contrary Say In Speaking Of Divine Things That It Is Necessary To Love Them In Order To Know Them, And That We Only Enter Truth Through Charity.

We Never Love A Person, But Only Qualities.

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

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

Force Rules The World-not Opinion; But It Is Opinion That Makes Use Of Force.

I Take It As A Matter Not To Be Disputed, That If All Knew What Each Said Of The Other, There Would Not Be Four Friends In The World. This Seems Proved By The Quarrels And Disputes Caused By The Disclosures Which Are Occasionally Made.

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

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

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.

All Of Our Reasoning Ends In Surrender To Feeling.

You Always Admire What You Really Don't Understand.

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

Noble Deeds That Are Concealed Are Most Esteemed.

Deeds And Words

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.

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

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

If God Does Not Exist, One Loses Nothing By Believing In Him Anyway, While If He Does Exist, One Stands To Lose Everything By Not Believing.

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

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

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

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.

I Would Inquire Of Reasonable Persons Whether This Principle: Matter Is Naturally Wholly Incapable Of Thought, And This Other: I Think, Therefore I Am, Are In Fact The Same In The Mind Of Descartes, And In That Of St. Augustine, Who Said The Same Thing Twelve Hundred Years Before.

Nothing Is So Intolerable To Man As Being Fully At Rest, Without A Passion, Without Business, Without Entertainment, Without Care.

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

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

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

Now, If The Passions Had No Hold On Us, A Week And A Hundred Years Would Amount To The Same.

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.

Losses Are Comparative; Imagination Only Makes Them Of Any Moment.

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.

We Are Only Troubled By The Fears Which We, And Not Nature, Give Ourselves, For They Add To The State In Which We Are The Passions Of The State In Which We Are Not.

The Serene, Silent Beauty Of A Holy Life Is The Most Powerful Influence In The World, Next To The Night Of God.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Reason's Last Step Is To Acknowledge That There Are Infinitely Many Things Beyond It.

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

Things Are Always At Their Best In Their Beginning.

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

To Find Recreation In Amusement Is Not Happiness.

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.

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.

...for The Truth Is Always Older Than All The Opinions Men Have Held Regarding It; And One Should Be Ignoring The Nature Of Truth If We Imagined That The Truth Began At The Time It Came To Be Known.

We Are Fools To Depend Upon The Society Of Our Fellow-men. Wretched As We Are, Powerless As We Are, They Will Not Aid Us; We Shall Die Alone.

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.

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

Our True Dignity Consists — In Thought. Thence We Must Derive Our Elevation, Not From Space Or Duration. Let Us Endeavor Then To Think Well; This Is The Principle Of Morals.

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.

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.

Man Is Clearly Made To Think. It Is His Whole Dignity And His Whole Merit; And His Whole Duty Is To Think As He Ought. And The Order Of Thought Is To Begin With Ourselves, And With Our Author And Our End.

Not To Be Mad Is Another Form Of Madness

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

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

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

All Is One, All Is Different. How Many Natures Exist In Man? How Many Vocations? And By What Chance Does Each Man Ordinarily Choose What He Has Heard Praised?

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

Little Things Console Us Because Little Things Afflict Us.

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

All Our Dignity Lies In Our Thoughts.

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

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

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.

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.

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

When I Consider The Small Span Of My Life Absorbed In The Eternity Of All Time, Or The Small Part Of Space Which I Can Touch Or See Engulfed By The Infinite Immensity Of Spaces That I Know Not And That Know Me Not, I Am Frightened And Astonished To See Myself Here Instead Of There … Now Instead Of Then.

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

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.

We Know Then The Existence And Nature Of The Finite, Because We Also Are Finite And Have Extension. We Know The Existence Of The Infinite And Are Ignorant Of Its Nature, Because It Has Extension Like Us, But Not Limits Like Us. But We Know Neither The Existence Nor The Nature Of God, Because He Has Neither Extension Nor Limits.

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

Since [man] Is Infinitely Removed From Comprehending The Extremes, The End Of Things And Their Beginning Are Hopelessly Hidden From Him In An Impenetrable Secret; He Is Equally Incapable Of Seeing The Nothing From Which He Was Made, And The Infinite In Which He Is Swallowed Up.

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.

Trending Author

David Hyde Pierce

Elizabeth Bowen

Charles Bukowski

Category