Pensées — Blaise Pascal

Pensées

Blaise Pascal · Licença: Public domain · Fonte

• For myself, I confess that so soon as the Christian religion reveals the principle that human nature is corrupt and fallen from God, that opens my eyes to see everywhere the mark of this truth: for nature is such that she testifies everywhere, both within man and without him, to a lost God and a corrupt nature. SECTION VII · ¶1263
• Man's true nature, his true good, true virtue, and true religion, are things of which the knowledge is inseparable. SECTION VII · ¶1265
• _Greatness, wretchedness._--The more light we have, the more greatness and the more baseness we discover in man. Ordinary men--those who are more educated: philosophers, they astonish ordinary men--Christians, they astonish philosophers. SECTION VII · ¶1267
• Who will then be surprised to see that religion only makes us know profoundly what we already know in proportion to our light? SECTION VII · ¶1268
• This religion taught to her children what men have only been able to discover by their greatest knowledge. SECTION VII · ¶1270
• _Of original sin.[168] Ample tradition of original sin according to the Jews._ SECTION VII · ¶1274
• On the saying in Genesis viii, 21: "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." SECTION VII · ¶1275
• _R. Moses Haddarschan_: This evil leaven is placed in man from the time that he is formed. SECTION VII · ¶1276
• _Massechet Succa_: This evil leaven has seven names in Scripture. It is called _evil, the foreskin, uncleanness, an enemy, a scandal, a heart of stone, the north wind_; all this signifies the malignity which is concealed and impressed in the heart of man. SECTION VII · ¶1277
• _Midrasch Tillim_ says the same thing, and that God will deliver the good nature of man from the evil. SECTION VII · ¶1278
• This malignity is renewed every day against man, as it is written, Psalm xxxvii, 32: "The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him"; but God will not abandon him. This malignity tries the heart of man in this life, and will accuse him in the other. All this is found in the Talmud. SECTION VII · ¶1279
• _Midrasch Tillim_ on Psalm iv, 4: "Stand in awe and sin not." Stand in awe and be afraid of your lust, and it will not lead you into sin. And on Psalm xxxvi, 1: "The wicked has said within his own heart, Let not the fear of God be before me." That is to say that the malignity natural to man has said that to the wicked. SECTION VII · ¶1280
• _Midrasch Tillim_ says the same thing, and that Scripture in that passage, speaking of the enemy, means the evil leaven; and that, in [_giving_] him that bread and that water, we heap coals of fire on his head. SECTION VII · ¶1283
• _Midrasch el Kohelet_ on Ecclesiastes ix, 14: "A great king besieged a little city." This great king is the evil leaven; the great bulwarks built against it are temptations; and there has been found a poor wise man who has delivered it--that is to say, virtue. SECTION VII · ¶1284
• And on Psalm xli, 1: "Blessed is he that considereth the poor." SECTION VII · ¶1285
• And on Psalm lxxviii, 39: "The spirit passeth away, and cometh not again"; whence some have erroneously argued against the immortality of the soul. But the sense is that this spirit is the evil leaven, which accompanies man till death, and will not return at the resurrection. SECTION VII · ¶1286
• And on Psalm ciii the same thing. SECTION VII · ¶1287
• Principles of Rabbinism: two Messiahs. SECTION VII · ¶1289
• Will it be said that, as men have declared that righteousness has departed the earth, they therefore knew of original sin?--_Nemo ante obitum beatus est_[170]--that is to say, they knew death to be the beginning of eternal and essential happiness? SECTION VII · ¶1291
• _Order._--After _Corruption_ to say: "It is right that all those who are in that state should know it, both those who are content with it, and those who are not content with it; but it is not right that all should see Redemption." SECTION VII · ¶1295
• If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...? SECTION VII · ¶1297
• What, then, can we have but esteem for a religion which knows so well the defects of man, and desire for the truth of a religion which promises remedies so desirable? SECTION VII · ¶1298
• All men naturally hate one another. They employ lust as far as possible in the service of the public weal. But this is only a [_pretence_] and a false image of love; for at bottom it is only hate. SECTION VII · ¶1300
• To pity the unfortunate is not contrary to lust. On the contrary, we can quite well give such evidence of friendship, and acquire the reputation of kindly feeling, without giving anything. SECTION VII · ¶1302
• From lust men have found and extracted excellent rules of policy, morality, and justice; but in reality this vile root of man, this _figmentum malum_,[171] is only covered, it is not taken away. SECTION VII · ¶1304
• _Injustice._--They have not found any other means of satisfying lust without doing injury to others. SECTION VII · ¶1306
• Self is hateful. You, Miton, conceal it; you do not for that reason destroy it; you are, then, always hateful. SECTION VII · ¶1308
• --No; for in acting as we do to oblige everybody, we give no more occasion for hatred of us.--That is true, if we only hated in Self the vexation which comes to us from it. But if I hate it because it is unjust, and because it makes itself the centre of everything, I shall always hate it. SECTION VII · ¶1309
• It is a perverted judgment that makes every one place himself above the rest of the world, and prefer his own good, and the continuance of his own good fortune and life, to that of the rest of the world! SECTION VII · ¶1312
• Each one is all in all to himself; for he being dead, all is dead to him. Hence it comes that each believes himself to be all in all to everybody. We must not judge of nature by ourselves, but by it. SECTION VII · ¶1314
• The rivers of Babylon rush and fall and sweep away. SECTION VII · ¶1318
• O holy Sion, where all is firm and nothing falls! SECTION VII · ¶1319
• We must sit upon the waters, not under them or in them, but on them; and not standing but seated; being seated to be humble, and being above them to be secure. But we shall stand in the porches of Jerusalem. SECTION VII · ¶1320
• Let us see if this pleasure is stable or transitory; if it pass away, it is a river of Babylon. SECTION VII · ¶1321
• _The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, pride, etc._--There are three orders of things: the flesh, the spirit, and the will. The carnal are the rich and kings; they have the body as their object. Inquirers and scientists; they have the mind as their object. The wise; they have righteousness as their object. SECTION VII · ¶1323
• The three lusts have made three sects; and the philosophers have done no other thing than follow one of the three lusts. SECTION VII · ¶1326
• _Search for the true good._--Ordinary men place the good in fortune and external goods, or at least in amusement. Philosophers have shown the vanity of all this, and have placed it where they could. SECTION VII · ¶1328
• _Philosophers._--We are full of things which take us out of ourselves. SECTION VII · ¶1333
• The Stoics say, "Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest." And that is not true. SECTION VII · ¶1336
• Others say, "Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in amusement." And this is not true. Illness comes. SECTION VII · ¶1337

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