Blaise Pascal

“ Diversion.—Is not the royal dignity itself so truly great as to make its possessor happy by the mere contemplation of what he is? Must he be diverted from this thought like ordinary people? I see well enough that a man may be made happy by diverting him from the thought of his domestic sorrows so that he apply all his care to excel in dancing. But will it be the same with a king, and will he be happier if he devote himself to these idle amusements rather than to the contemplation of his greatness? ”

“ The greatness of man consists in thought.
A thinking reed.—Not from space must I seek my dignity, but from the ruling of my thought. I should have no more if I possessed whole worlds. By space the Universe encompasses and swallows me as an atom, by thought I encompass it.
Man is but a reed, weakest in nature, but a reed which thinks. It needs not that the whole Universe should arm to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. ”

“ Philosophers have....
All religions and sects in the world have had natural reason for a guide. Christians alone have been obliged to take their rules from without themselves, and to acquaint themselves with those which Jesus Christ left to men of old time to be transmitted to the faithful. This constraint is wearisome to these good fathers. They desire like the rest of the world to have liberty to follow their imaginations. In vain we cry to them, as the prophets to the Jews of old: "Enter into the Church, enquire of the ways which men of old have left to her, and follow those paths." ”

“ What delight can we find in the expectation of nothing but unavailing misery? What cause of boasting that we are in impenetrable darkness? How can such an argument as the following occur to a reasoning man?
"I know not who has sent me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am; I am terribly ignorant of every thing; I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, nor even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, yet is as ignorant of itself as of all beside. ”

“ No doubt equality of goods is just, but since they are unable to bring about that power should obey justice, people have judged it right to obey power; not being able to add power to justice they have justified power, so that justice and power should coalesce, and peace, the sovereign good, result.
Do we follow the majority because they have more reason? No; but because they have more power.
Do we follow ancient laws and opinions because they are more sound? No; but because they stand alone and take from us the root of diversity. ”

“ The spirit of this sovereign judge of the world is not so independent but that it is liable to be troubled by the first disturbance about him. The noise of a cannon is not needed to break his train of thought, it need only be the creaking of a weathercock or a pulley. Do not be astonished if at this moment he argues incoherently, a fly is buzzing about his ears, and that is enough to render him incapable of sound judgment. Would you have him arrive at truth, drive away that creature which holds his reason in check, and troubles that powerful intellect which gives laws to towns and kingdoms. ”

“ Frivolity.—It is plain that the frivolity of the world is so little known, that it is a strange and surprising thing to say it is foolish to seek for greatness, and this is great cause for wonder.
Whoso does not see the frivolity of the world is himself most frivolous. And indeed all see it save young people, who are engaged in turmoil, diversion, and the thought of the future. But take away their diversion and you will see them consumed with weariness; then they feel their nothingness without knowing it. ”

“ If our view be arrested there, let imagination pass beyond, and it will sooner exhaust the power of thinking than nature that of giving scope for thought. The whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is every where, the circumference no where. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, in that thought let imagination lose itself. ”

“ We cannot go so far as that, and I therefore state as a fact that there never has been a perfect finished sceptic; nature upholds the weakness of reason, and prevents its wandering to such a point.
Shall he say on the contrary that he is in sure possession of truth, when if we press him never so little, he can produce no title, and is obliged to quit his hold?
What a chimæra then is man! how strange and monstrous! a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy. Judge of all things, yet a weak earth-worm; depositary of truth, yet a cesspool of uncertainty and error ”

“ It is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain, another turn of imagination would make us discover its nothingness without difficulty.
Two faces which resemble each other, neither of which alone causes our laughter, make us laugh, when together, by their resemblance.
Children who are frightened at the face they have daubed are mere children, but how shall one who is so weak when a child grow truly strong as he grows old? We only change our fancies.
All that is brought to perfection by progress perishes also by progress. All that has been weak can never be absolutely strong. ”

“ But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and consolation, a God who fills the souls and hearts of his own, a God who makes them feel their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy, who unites himself to their inmost spirit, filling it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, rendering them incapable of any end other than himself. ”

“ We endeavour to sustain the present by the future, and think of arranging things not in our power, for a time at which we have no certainty of arriving.
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think of the present, and if we do so, it is only that we may borrow light from it to direct the future. The present is never our end; the past and the present are our means, the future alone is our end. Thus we never live, but hope to live, and while we always lay ourselves out to be happy, it is inevitable that we can never be so. ”

“ When I see the blindness and the misery of man, when I survey the whole dumb Universe, and man without light, left to himself, and lost, as it were, in this corner of the Universe, not knowing who has placed him here, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, and incapable of any knowledge whatever, I fall into terror like that of a man who, having been carried in his sleep to an island desert and terrible, should awake ignorant of his whereabouts and with no means of escape ”

“ The most important affair in life is the choice of a trade, yet chance decides it. Custom makes men masons, soldiers, tilers. "He is a good tiler," says one, "and soldiers are fools." But others: "There is nothing great but war, all but soldiers are rogues." We choose our professions according as we hear this or that praised or despised in our childhood, for we naturally love truth and hate folly. These words move us, the only fault is in their application. So great is the force of custom that out of those who by nature are only men, are made all conditions of men. ”

“ I have heard thee in the days of salvation and of mercy, and I have established thee for a covenant of the people, and to cause thee to inherit the desolate nations, that thou mayest say to those who are in chains: Go forth, and to those that are in darkness: Come into the light, and possess these abundant and fertile lands. They shall no more labour, nor hunger, nor thirst, neither shall the sun smite them; for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of waters shall he guide them, and make the mountains plain before them. ”

“ The greatness of Man.—We have so great an idea of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or to lie under the disesteem of any soul, and all the happiness of men consists in that esteem.
The search after glory is the greatest vileness of man. Yet it is also the greatest mark of his excellence, for whatever riches he may have on earth, whatever health and advantage, he is not satisfied if he have not the esteem of men. He rates human reason so highly that whatever privileges he may have on earth, he is not content unless he stand well in the judgment of men. ”

“ Infinite, nothing.—The soul of man is cast into the body, in which it finds number, time, dimension; it reasons thereon, and calls this nature or necessity, and cannot believe aught else.
Unity joined to infinity increases it not, any more than a foot measure added to infinite space. The finite is annihilated in presence of the infinite and becomes simply nought. Thus our intellect before God, thus our justice before the divine justice. There is not so great a disproportion between our justice and that of God, as between unity and infinity. ”

“ The Mahomedan religion has for its foundation the Koran and Mahomet. But was this prophet, who was to be the last hope of the world, foretold? What mark has he that every other man has not who chooses to call himself prophet? What miracles does he himself tell us that he wrought? What mystery has he taught? Even according to his own tradition, what was the morality, what the happiness he offered?
The Jewish religion must be differently regarded in the tradition of the sacred books and in the tradition of the people. ”

“ We cannot say so much about Religion. It is not certain that it is, but who will dare to say that it is certainly possible that it is not? But when we work for to-morrow, therefore for the uncertain, we act reasonably.
For we should work for the uncertain by the doctrine of chances already laid down.
We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. [103] The sceptics who desire truth alone labour in vain. ”

“ Men imagine that conversion consists in making of the worship of God such a transaction and way of life as they picture to themselves. True conversion consists in the annihilation of self before that universal Being whom we have so often provoked, and who might with justice destroy us at any moment; in recognising that we can do nought without him, and have merited nothing from him but his wrath. It consists in knowing that there is unconquerable opposition between us and God, and that without a mediator there could be no communion with him. ”

“ THE WEAKNESS, UNREST, AND
DEFECTS OF MAN.
The Misery of Man.—We care nothing for the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if we could make it move faster; or we call back the past, to stop its rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander through the times in which we have no part, unthinking of that which alone is ours; so frivolous are we that we dream of the days which are not, and pass by without reflection those which alone exist. For the present generally gives us pain ”

“ Thus each degree of good fortune which raises us in the world removes us further from truth, because we fear most to wound those whose affection is most useful, and whose dislike is most dangerous. A prince may be the by-word of all Europe, yet he alone know nothing of it. I am not surprised; to speak the truth is useful to whom it is spoken, but disadvantageous to those who speak it, since it makes them hated. Now those who live with princes love their own interests more than that of the prince they serve, and thus they take care not to benefit him so as to do themselves a disservice. ”

“ It is then good to obey laws and customs because they are laws, but we ought to know that there is neither truth nor justice to introduce into them, that we know nothing about these, and can therefore only follow what is recognised, and thus we should never transgress them. But most men cannot receive this doctrine, and since they believe that truth can be found, and that it resides in law and custom, they believe these laws, and take their antiquity as a proof of their truth, and not merely of their authority apart from truth. ”

“ It is unworthy of God to unite himself to miserable man, but it is not unworthy of God to raise him from his misery.
The infinite distance between body and mind is a figure of the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity, for this is supernatural.
All the splendour of greatness has no lustre for those who seek understanding.
The greatness of men of understanding is invisible to kings, to the rich, to conquerors, and to all the great according to the flesh.
The greatness of wisdom, which has no existence save in God, is invisible to the carnal and to men of understanding. ”