Pensées — Blaise Pascal

Pensées

Blaise Pascal · Licence: Public domain · Source

• New York E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC. ¶5
• _This paperback edition of "Pascal's Pensées" Published 1958 by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A._ ¶6
• _Passages_ erased by Pascal are enclosed in square brackets, thus []. _Words_, added or corrected by the editor of the text, are similarly denoted, but are in italics. ¶40
• It has been seen fit to transfer Fragment 514 of the French edition to the Notes. All subsequent Fragments have accordingly been renumbered. ¶41
• All mathematicians would then be intuitive if they had clear sight, for they do not reason incorrectly from principles known to them; and intuitive minds would be mathematical if they could turn their eyes to the principles of mathematics to which they are unused. SECTION I · ¶46
• But dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical. SECTION I · ¶49
• Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided all things are explained to them by means of definitions and axioms; otherwise they are inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only right when the principles are quite clear. SECTION I · ¶50
• And men of intuition who are only intuitive cannot have the patience to reach to first principles of things speculative and conceptual, which they have never seen in the world, and which are altogether out of the common. SECTION I · ¶51
• There are different kinds of right understanding;[2] some have right understanding in a certain order of things, and not in others, where they go astray. Some draw conclusions well from a few premises, and this displays an acute judgment. SECTION I · ¶53
• Others draw conclusions well where there are many premises. SECTION I · ¶54
• For example, the former easily learn hydrostatics, where the premises are few, but the conclusions are so fine that only the greatest acuteness can reach them. SECTION I · ¶55
• And in spite of that these persons would perhaps not be great mathematicians, because mathematics contain a great number of premises, and there is perhaps a kind of intellect that can search with ease a few premises to the bottom, and cannot in the least penetrate those matters in which there are many premises. SECTION I · ¶56
• _Mathematics, intuition._--True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect. SECTION I · ¶61
• For it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect. SECTION I · ¶62
• To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. SECTION I · ¶63
• Just as we harm the understanding, we harm the feelings also. SECTION I · ¶67
• The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men. SECTION I · ¶70
• There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as they listen to vespers. SECTION I · ¶72
• People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others. SECTION I · ¶76
• Scaramouch,[5] who only thinks of one thing. SECTION I · ¶81
• The doctor,[6] who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has said everything, so full is he of the desire of talking. SECTION I · ¶82
• One likes to see the error, the passion of Cleobuline,[7] because she is unconscious of it. She would be displeasing, if she were not deceived. SECTION I · ¶84
• Eloquence, which persuades by sweetness, not by authority; as a tyrant, not as a king. SECTION I · ¶88
• Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way--(1) that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it. SECTION I · ¶90
• Rivers are roads which move,[8] and which carry us whither we desire to go. SECTION I · ¶93
• The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first. SECTION I · ¶98
• Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own place. SECTION I · ¶102
• Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better. SECTION I · ¶104
• I had as soon it said that I used words employed before. And in the same way if the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different discourse, no more do the same words in their different arrangement form different thoughts! SECTION I · ¶105
• Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects. SECTION I · ¶107
• _Eloquence._--It requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true. SECTION I · ¶111
• Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait. SECTION I · ¶113
• _Miscellaneous. Language._--Those who make antitheses by forcing words are like those who make false windows for symmetry. Their rule is not to speak accurately, but to make apt figures of speech. SECTION I · ¶115
• Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference, and based also on the face of man; whence it happens that symmetry is only wanted in breadth, not in height or depth. SECTION I · ¶117
• We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting. The rule is uprightness. SECTION I · ¶121
• Beauty of omission, of judgment. SECTION I · ¶122
• All the false beauties which we blame in Cicero have their admirers, and in great number. SECTION I · ¶124
• There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. SECTION I · ¶126
• Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, rooms, dress, etc. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste. SECTION I · ¶127
• Nothing makes us understand better the ridiculousness of a false sonnet than to consider nature and the standard, and then to imagine a woman or a house made according to that standard. SECTION I · ¶129

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