This man spends his life without weariness in playing every day for a small stake. Give him each morning the money he can win each day, on condition he does not play; you make him miserable. It will perhaps be said that he seeks the amusement of play and not the winnings. Make him then play for nothing; he will not become excited over it, and will feel bored. It is then not the amusement alone that he seeks; a languid and passionless amusement will weary him. He must get excited over it, and deceive himself by the fancy that he will be happy to win what he would not have as a gift on condition of not playing; and he must make for himself an object of passion, and excite over it his desire, his anger, his fear, to obtain his imagined end, as children are frightened at the face they have blackened.

Place: Part I, 1, 2, c. 1, section 4.[44] · ¶443
License: Public domain · Source
The text is given as in the edition, unedited.

Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (WLC), CC BY 4.0

This man spends his life without weariness in playing every day for a … — Pensées