Pensées — Blaise Pascal

Pensées

Blaise Pascal · الترخيص: Public domain · المصدر

• Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us. SECTION VII · ¶1338
• Had Epictetus seen the way perfectly, he would have said to men, "You follow a wrong road"; he shows that there is another, but he does not lead to it. It is the way of willing what God wills. Jesus Christ alone leads to it: _Via, veritas._[175] SECTION VII · ¶1340
• The vices of Zeno[176] himself. SECTION VII · ¶1341
• _The reason of effects._--Epictetus.[177] Those who say, "You have a headache;" this is not the same thing. We are assured of health, and not of justice; and in fact his own was nonsense. SECTION VII · ¶1343
• And yet he believed it demonstrable, when he said, "It is either in our power or it is not." But he did not perceive that it is not in our power to regulate the heart, and he was wrong to infer this from the fact that there were some Christians. SECTION VII · ¶1344
• No other religion has proposed to men to hate themselves. No other religion then can please those who hate themselves, and who seek a Being truly lovable. And these, if they had never heard of the religion of a God humiliated, would embrace it at once. SECTION VII · ¶1346
• Self-will will never be satisfied, though it should have command of all it would; but we are satisfied from the moment we renounce it. Without it we cannot be discontented; with it we cannot be content. SECTION VII · ¶1354
• Let us imagine a body full of thinking members.[178] SECTION VII · ¶1356
• _Members, To commence with that._--To regulate the love which we owe to ourselves, we must imagine a body full of thinking members, for we are members of the whole, and must see how each member should love itself, etc.... SECTION VII · ¶1358
• If the feet and the hands had a will of their own, they could only be in their order in submitting this particular will to the primary will which governs the whole body. Apart from that, they are in disorder and mischief; but in willing only the good of the body, they accomplish their own good. SECTION VII · ¶1360
• We must love God only and hate self only. SECTION VII · ¶1362
• If the members of natural and civil communities tend towards the weal of the body, the communities themselves ought to look to another more general body of which they are members. We ought therefore to look to the whole. We are therefore born unjust and depraved. SECTION VII · ¶1366
• When we want to think of God, is there nothing which turns us away, and tempts us to think of something else? All this is bad, and is born in us. SECTION VII · ¶1368
• To make the members happy, they must have one will, and submit it to the body. SECTION VII · ¶1373
• To be a member is to have neither life, being, nor movement, except through the spirit of the body, and for the body. SECTION VII · ¶1379
• It cannot by its nature love any other thing, except for itself and to subject it to self, because each thing loves itself more than all. But in loving the body, it loves itself, because it only exists in it, by it, and for it. _Qui adhæret Deo unus spiritus est._[180] SECTION VII · ¶1381
• The body loves the hand; and the hand, if it had a will, should love itself in the same way as it is loved by the soul. All love which goes beyond this is unfair. SECTION VII · ¶1382
• _Adhærens Deo unus spiritus est._ We love ourselves, because we are members of Jesus Christ. We love Jesus Christ, because He is the body of which we are members. All is one, one is in the other, like the Three Persons. SECTION VII · ¶1383
• Two laws[181] suffice to rule the whole Christian Republic better than all the laws of statecraft. SECTION VII · ¶1385
• The dignity of man in his innocence consisted in using and having dominion over the creatures, but now in separating himself from them, and subjecting himself to them. SECTION VII · ¶1389
• Every religion is false, which as to its faith does not worship one God as the origin of everything, and which as to its morality does not love one only God as the object of everything. SECTION VII · ¶1391
• ... But it is impossible that God should ever be the end, if He is not the beginning. We lift our eyes on high, but lean upon the sand; and the earth will dissolve, and we shall fall whilst looking at the heavens. SECTION VII · ¶1393
• We are born so averse to this love of God, and it is so necessary that we must be born guilty, or God would be unjust. SECTION VII · ¶1396
• Men, not being accustomed to form merit, but only to recompense it where they find it formed, judge of God by themselves. SECTION VII · ¶1398
• Yet no religion has indicated that this was a sin; or that we were born in it; or that we were obliged to resist it; or has thought of giving us remedies for it. SECTION VII · ¶1403
• The true religion teaches our duties; our weaknesses, pride, and lust; and the remedies, humility and mortification. SECTION VII · ¶1405
• The true religion must teach greatness and misery; must lead to the esteem and contempt of self, to love and to hate. SECTION VII · ¶1407
• If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God. SECTION VII · ¶1409
• Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness. SECTION VII · ¶1411
• It is better not to fast, and thereby humbled, than to fast and be self-satisfied therewith. The Pharisee and the Publican.[188] SECTION VII · ¶1418
• The meaning of the words, good and evil. SECTION VII · ¶1421
• First step: to be blamed for doing evil, and praised for doing good. SECTION VII · ¶1423
• Second step: to be neither praised, nor blamed. SECTION VII · ¶1424
• Philosophers have consecrated the vices by placing them in God Himself. Christians have consecrated the virtues. SECTION VII · ¶1428
• All things can be deadly to us, even the things made to serve us; as in nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circumspectly. SECTION VII · ¶1432
• The least movement affects all nature; the entire sea changes because of a rock. Thus in grace, the least action affects everything by its consequences; therefore everything is important. SECTION VII · ¶1433
• In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious. SECTION VII · ¶1434
• Let God not impute to us our sins, that is to say, all the consequences and results of our sins, which are dreadful, even those of the smallest faults, if we wish to follow them out mercilessly! SECTION VII · ¶1436
• The spirit of grace; the hardness of the heart; external circumstances. SECTION VII · ¶1438
• Grace is indeed needed to turn a man into a saint; and he who doubts it does not know what a saint or a man is. SECTION VII · ¶1440

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