Pensées — Blaise Pascal

Pensées

Blaise Pascal · License: Public domain · Source

• And will this one scoff at the other? Who ought to scoff? And yet, the latter does not scoff at the other, but pities him. SECTION III · ¶561
• To reproach Miton[85] with not being troubled, since God will reproach him. SECTION III · ¶563
• _Quid fiet hominibus qui minima contemnunt, majora non credunt?_ SECTION III · ¶565
• Thus our first interest and our first duty is to enlighten ourselves on this subject, whereon depends all our conduct. Therefore among those who do not believe, I make a vast difference between those who strive with all their power to inform themselves, and those who live without troubling or thinking about it. SECTION III · ¶570
• I can have only compassion for those who sincerely bewail their doubt, who regard it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who, sparing no effort to escape it, make of this inquiry their principal and most serious occupations. SECTION III · ¶571
• How can people hold these opinions? What joy can we find in the expectation of nothing but hopeless misery? What reason for boasting that we are in impenetrable darkness? And how can it happen that the following argument occurs to a reasonable man? SECTION III · ¶577
• Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put him? SECTION III · ¶580
• Before entering into the proofs of the Christian religion, I find it necessary to point out the sinfulness of those men who live in indifference to the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and which touches them so nearly. SECTION III · ¶588
• Of all their errors, this doubtless is the one which most convicts them of foolishness and blindness, and in which it is easiest to confound them by the first glimmerings of common sense, and by natural feelings. SECTION III · ¶589
• There is nothing clearer than this; and thus, according to the principles of reason, the conduct of men is wholly unreasonable, if they do not take another course. SECTION III · ¶591
• Yet this eternity exists, and death, which must open into it, and threatens them every hour, must in a little time infallibly put them under the dreadful necessity of being either annihilated or unhappy for ever, without knowing which of these eternities is for ever prepared for them. SECTION III · ¶593
• Men lack heart; they would not make a friend of it. SECTION III · ¶597
• To be insensible to the extent of despising interesting things, and to become insensible to the point which interests us most. SECTION III · ¶599
• The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion. SECTION III · ¶601
• Let us imagine a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows, and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men. SECTION III · ¶603
• Thus not only the zeal of those who seek Him proves God, but also the blindness of those who seek Him not. SECTION III · ¶606
• All the objections of this one and that one only go against themselves, and not against religion. All that infidels say ... SECTION III · ¶608
• _Fascinatio nugacitatis._[87]--That passion may not harm us, let us act as if we had only eight hours to live. SECTION III · ¶612
• If we ought to devote eight hours of life, we ought to devote a hundred years. SECTION III · ¶614
• The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. SECTION III · ¶618
• How many kingdoms know us not! SECTION III · ¶620
• Why is my knowledge limited? Why my stature? Why my life to one hundred years rather than to a thousand? What reason has nature had for giving me such, and for choosing this number rather than another in the infinity of those from which there is no more reason to choose one than another, trying nothing else? SECTION III · ¶622
• Art thou less a slave by being loved and favoured by thy master? Thou art indeed well off, slave. Thy master favours thee; he will soon beat thee. SECTION III · ¶624
• The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever. SECTION III · ¶626
• _Instability._[89]--It is a horrible thing to feel all that we possess slipping away. SECTION III · ¶630
• Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world. SECTION III · ¶632
• _Injustice._--That presumption should be joined to meanness is extreme injustice. SECTION III · ¶634
• To fear death without danger, and not in danger, for one must be a man. SECTION III · ¶636
• Sudden death alone is feared; hence confessors stay with lords. SECTION III · ¶638
• An heir finds the title-deeds of his house. Will he say, "Perhaps they are forged?" and neglect to examine them? SECTION III · ¶640
• _Dungeon._--I approve of not examining the opinion of Copernicus; but this...! It concerns all our life to know whether the soul be mortal or immortal. SECTION III · ¶642
• It is certain that the mortality or immortality of the soul must make an entire difference to morality. And yet philosophers have constructed their ethics independently of this: they discuss to pass an hour. SECTION III · ¶644
• Plato, to incline to Christianity. SECTION III · ¶645
• The fallacy of philosophers who have not discussed the immortality of the soul. The fallacy of their dilemma in Montaigne. SECTION III · ¶647
• Atheists ought to say what is perfectly evident; now it is not perfectly evident that the soul is material. SECTION III · ¶649
• Why cannot a virgin bear a child? Does a hen not lay eggs without a cock? What distinguishes these outwardly from others? And who has told us that the hen may not form the germ as well as the cock? SECTION III · ¶652
• What have they to say against the resurrection, and against the child-bearing of the Virgin? Which is the more difficult, to produce a man or an animal, or to reproduce it? And if they had never seen any species of animals, could they have conjectured whether they were produced without connection with each other? SECTION III · ¶654
• How I hate these follies of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the Gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there? SECTION III · ¶656
• Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree. SECTION III · ¶658
• _Order by dialogues._--What ought I to do? I see only darkness everywhere. Shall I believe I am nothing? Shall I believe I am God? SECTION III · ¶663

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