We must regard the _Pensées_ as merely the first notes for a work whic… — Pensées

Pensées — Blaise Pascal

We must regard the _Pensées_ as merely the first notes for a work which he left far from completion; we have, in Sainte-Beuve's words, a tower of which the stones have been laid on each other, but not cemented, and the structure unfinished. In early years his memory had been amazingly retentive of anything that he wished to remember; and had it not been impaired by increasing illness and pain, he probably would not have been obliged to set down these notes at all. But taking the book as it is left to us, we still find that it occupies a unique place in the history of French literature and in the history of religious meditation.

Place: ¶18
License: Public domain · Source
The text is given as in the edition, unedited.

← BackNext →Check your own quote