Pensées — Blaise Pascal

Pensées

Blaise Pascal · Άδεια: Public domain · Πηγή

• _Rarum est enim ut satis se quisque vereatur._[144] SECTION VI · ¶1041
• _Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes deos._[145] SECTION VI · ¶1042
• _Nihil turpius quam cognitioni assertionem præcurrere._ Cic.[146] SECTION VI · ¶1043
• _Nec me pudet, ut istos, fateri nescire quid nesciam._[147] SECTION VI · ¶1044
• _Thought._--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! SECTION VI · ¶1047
• But what is this thought? How foolish it is! SECTION VI · ¶1048
• The power of flies; they win battles,[149] hinder our soul from acting, eat our body. SECTION VI · ¶1052
• Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason. SECTION VI · ¶1056
• A thought has escaped me. I wanted to write it down. I write instead, that it has escaped me.] SECTION VI · ¶1059
• In writing down my thought, it sometimes escapes me; but this makes me remember my weakness, that I constantly forget. This is as instructive to me as my forgotten thought; for I strive only to know my nothingness. SECTION VI · ¶1063
• _Scepticism._--I shall here write my thoughts without order, and not perhaps in unintentional confusion; that is true order, which will always indicate my object by its very disorder. I should do too much honour to my subject, if I treated it with order, since I want to show that it is incapable of it. SECTION VI · ¶1065
• The sceptic Arcesilaus,[151] who became a dogmatist.] SECTION VI · ¶1070
• This sect derives more strength from its enemies than from its friends; for the weakness of man is far more evident in those who know it not than in those who know it. SECTION VI · ¶1072
• It is not good to have too much liberty. It is not good to have all one wants. SECTION VI · ¶1078
• All good maxims are in the world. We only need to apply them. For instance, we do not doubt that we ought to risk our lives in defence of the public good; but for religion, no. SECTION VI · ¶1080
• It is true there must be inequality among men; but if this be conceded, the door is opened not only to the highest power, but to the highest tyranny. SECTION VI · ¶1081
• We must relax our minds a little; but this opens the door to the greatest debauchery. Let us mark the limits. There are no limits in things. Laws would put them there, and the mind cannot suffer it. SECTION VI · ¶1082
• When all is equally agitated, nothing appears to be agitated, as in a ship. When all tend to debauchery, none appears to do so. He who stops draws attention to the excess of others, like a fixed point. SECTION VI · ¶1086
• Contradiction is a bad sign of truth; several things which are certain are contradicted; several things which are false pass without contradiction. Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of contradiction a sign of truth. SECTION VI · ¶1090
• Ecclesiastes[152] shows that man without God is in total ignorance and inevitable misery. For it is wretched to have the wish, but not the power. Now he would be happy and assured of some truth, and yet he can neither know, nor desire not to know. He cannot even doubt. SECTION VI · ¶1102
• My God! How foolish this talk is! "Would God have made the world to damn it? Would He ask so much from persons so weak?" etc. Scepticism is the cure for this evil, and will take down this vanity. SECTION VI · ¶1104
• _Conversation._--Great words: Religion, I deny it. SECTION VI · ¶1106
• _Conversation._--Scepticism helps religion. SECTION VI · ¶1107
• All the principles of sceptics, stoics, atheists, etc., are true. But their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also true. SECTION VI · ¶1114
• _Instinct, reason._--We have an incapacity of proof, insurmountable by all dogmatism. We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism. SECTION VI · ¶1116
• Two things instruct man about his whole nature; instinct and experience. SECTION VI · ¶1118
• The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is then being miserable to know oneself to be miserable; but it is also being great to know that one is miserable. SECTION VI · ¶1120
• All these same miseries prove man's greatness. They are the miseries of a great lord, of a deposed king. SECTION VI · ¶1122
• We are not miserable without feeling it. A ruined house is not miserable. Man only is miserable. _Ego vir videns._[154] SECTION VI · ¶1124
• _The greatness of man._--We have so great an idea of the soul of man that we cannot endure being despised, or not being esteemed by any soul; and all the happiness of men consists in this esteem. SECTION VI · ¶1126
• The greatness of man even in his lust, to have known how to extract from it a wonderful code, and to have drawn from it a picture of benevolence. SECTION VI · ¶1130
• _Greatness._--The reasons of effects indicate the greatness of man, in having extracted so fair an order from lust. SECTION VI · ¶1132
• And those who most despise men, and put them on a level with the brutes, 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 their baseness. SECTION VI · ¶1135
• _Contradiction._--Pride counterbalancing all miseries. Man either hides his miseries, or, if he disclose them, glories in knowing them. SECTION VI · ¶1137
• Pride counterbalances and takes away all miseries. Here is a strange monster, and a very plain aberration. He is fallen from his place, and is anxiously seeking it. This is what all men do. Let us see who will have found it. SECTION VI · ¶1139
• When malice has reason on its side, it becomes proud, and parades reason in all its splendour. When austerity or stern choice has not arrived at the true good, and must needs return to follow nature, it becomes proud by reason of this return. SECTION VI · ¶1141
• Evil is easy, and has infinite forms; good is almost unique.[155] But a certain kind of evil is as difficult to find as what we call good; and often on this account such particular evil gets passed off as good. An extraordinary greatness of soul is needed in order to attain to it as well as to good. SECTION VI · ¶1143
• _The greatness of man._--The greatness of man is so evident, that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature we call in man wretchedness; by which we recognise that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his. SECTION VI · ¶1145
• _Perseus, King of Macedon._--Paulus Æmilius reproached Perseus for not killing himself. SECTION VI · ¶1148
• Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress, and which lifts us up. SECTION VI · ¶1150

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