Pascal Pensees Quotes

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

Let us weigh up the gain and the loss involved in calling heads that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then; wager that he does exist.

Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

God is enough for them.

[91] Cause and effect. One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person.

[128] Two things teach man about his whole nature: instinct and experience.

Hell is not populated mainly by passionate rebels but by nice, bland, indifferent, respectable people who simply never gave a damn.

[152] Between us and heaven or hell there is only life half-way, the most fragile thing in the world.

The tone of voice influences the wisest of us and alters the force of a speech or a poem.

Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast.

Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.

If we look at our work immediately after completing it, we are still too involved; if too long afterwards, we cannot pick up the thread again. It

A given man lives a life free from boredom by gambling a small sum every day. Give him every morning the money he might win that day, but on condition that he does not gamble, and you will make him unhappy.

Order. Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.

religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions

Where then is this self, if it is neither in the body nor the soul? And how can one love the body or the soul except for the sake of such qualities, which are not what makes up the self, since they are perishable? Would we love the substance of a person’s soul, in the abstract, whatever qualities might be in it? That is not possible, and it would be wrong. Therefore we never love anyone, but only qualities.

[77] Pride. Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it; in other words, we would never travel by sea if it meant never talking about it, and for the sheer pleasure of seeing things we could never hope to describe to others.

The prophets clearly said that Israel would always be beloved of God and that the law would be everlasting, and they also said that none would understand their meaning, but that it was veiled. How highly then should we esteem those who break the cipher for us and teach us to understand the hidden meaning,

The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever.

If we ought to give up a week we ought to give up our whole life.

What is wonderful, incomparable and wholly divine is that this religion which has always survived has always been under attack.

There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God, and not [human] enemies, no other good but God, and not a rich land.

[138] Diversion. It is easier to bear death when one is not thinking about it than the idea of death when there is no danger. (166)

The right way is to want what God wants. Christ alone leads to it. Via Veritas.1

Man without faith can know neither true good nor justice.

For I should like to know by what right this animal, which recognizes his own weakness, measures God’s mercy and keeps it within limits suggested by his own fancies.

[167] Submission and use of reason; that is what makes true Christianity.

This religion taught its children what men had managed to know only at their most enlightened.

God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will. Humble their pride.

that the closed mem6 signified 600 years. But the time was foretold clearly, while the manner was figurative.

[22] Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.

[38] Too much and too little wine. Do not give him any, he cannot find the truth. Give him too much; the same thing.

[115] Immateriality of the soul. When philosophers have subdued their passions, what material substance has managed to achieve this?

[186] You abuse the trust people have in the Church and make them believe anything.

[82] Wisdom leads us back to childhood. Except ye become as little children.1

[108] What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial.

There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.

Merely according to reason, nothing is just in itself, everything shifts with time. Custom is the whole of equity for the sole reason that it is accepted.

Nothing is so defective as those laws which correct defects.

Thus men who are naturally conscious of what they are shun nothing, so much as rest; they would do anything to be disturbed.

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical. If

Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.

[133] Diversion. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.

[123] Contradictions. Contempt for our existence, dying for nothing, hatred of our existence.

Put the world’s greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be: if there is a precipice below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail.

[96]. Cause and effect. Human weakness is the reason for so many canons of beauty; for instance, being a good lute-player. It is only our weakness which makes it a bad thing [not to be one?].

There is enough light to enlighten the elect and enough obscurity to humiliate them. There is enough obscurity to blind the reprobate and enough light to condemn them and deprive them of excuse.

[92] Cause and effect. It is then true to say that everyone is the victim of illusion, because the ordinary person’s opinions are sound without being intellectually so, for he believes truth to be where it is not. There is certainly some truth in these opinions, but not as much as people imagine. It is true that we should honour the gentry but not because gentle birth is a real advantage.

What I fault newspapers for is that day after day they draw our attention to insignificant things whereas only three or four times in our lives do we read a book in which there is something really essential. Since we tear the band off the newspaper so feverishly every morning, they ought to change things and put into the paper, oh, I don’t know, perhaps…Pascal’s Pensees! …and then, in a gilt-edged volume that we open only once in ten years…we would read that the Queen if Greece has gone to Cannes or that the Princesses de Leon has given a costume ball. This way the proper proportions would be established.

[23] Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

God being thus hidden, any religion that does not say that God is hidden is not true, and any religion which does not explain why does not instruct. Ours does all thus. Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.1

All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces. We must get away from it and crave excitement.

[80] Respect means; put yourself out. That may look pointless, but it is quite right, because it amounts to saying: I should certainly put myself out if you needed it, because I do so when you do not; besides, respect serves to distinguish the great. If respect meant sitting in an armchair we should be showing everyone respect and then there would be no way of marking distinction, but we make the distinction quite clear by putting ourselves out.

What kind of man had the Messiah to be, since through him the sceptre was to remain for ever in Judah, but at his coming the sceptre was to be removed from Judah? To ensure that seeing they should not see and hearing they should not hear,

They say that eclipses are portents of disaster, because disasters are so common, and misfortune occurs often enough for these forecasts to be right, whereas if they said that eclipses were portents of good fortune they would often be wrong.

What do the prophets say about Jesus Christ? That he will plainly be God? No, but that he is a truly hidden God, that he will not be recognized, that people will not believe that it is he, that he will be a stumbling-block on which many will fall,

However sad a man may be, if you can persuade him to take up some diversion he will be happy while it lasts, and however happy a man may be, if he lacks diversion and has no absorbing passion or entertainment to keep boredom away, he will soon be depressed and unhappy. Without diversion there is no joy; with diversion there is no sadness. That is what constitutes the happiness of persons of rank, for they have a number of people to divert them and the ability to keep themselves in this state.

What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the burdens of office, but the agitation that takes our mind off it and diverts us. That is why we prefer the hunt to the capture.

Everything which does not lead to charity is figurative. The sole object of Scripture is charity. Everything that does not lead to this sole good is figurative. For, since there is only one goal, everything that does not lead to it explicitly is figurative.

The word ‘enemy’ is therefore ambiguous, but if he says elsewhere, as he does, that he will deliver his people from their sins,1 as do Isaiah2 and others, the ambiguity is removed, and the double meaning of enemies reduced to the single meaning of iniquities.

A good portrait can only be made by reconciling all our contradictory features, and it is not enough to follow through a series of mutually compatible qualities without reconciling their opposites; to understand an author’s meaning all contradictory passages must be reconciled.

No other religion has proposed that we should hate ourselves. No other religion therefore can please those who hate themselves and seek a being who is really worthy of love. And if they had never [before] heard of the religion of a humiliated God, they would at once embrace it.

[172] The way of God, who disposes all things with gentleness, is to instil religion into our minds with reasoned arguments and into our hearts with grace, but attempting to instil it into hearts and minds with force and threats is to instil not religion but terror. Terror rather than religion.

Circumcision of the heart, true fasting, true sacrifice, true temple;2 the prophets showed that all this must be spiritual. Not the flesh that perishes, but that which does not perish.3 ‘Ye shall be free indeed.’4 So the other freedom is just a figurative freedom. ‘I am the true bread from heaven.’5

[172] The way of God, who disposes all things with gentleness, is to instil religion into our minds with reasoned arguments and into our hearts with grace, but attempting to instil it into hearts and minds with force and threats is to instil not religion but terror. Terror rather than religion. (185)

There is change and succession in all things.’ ‘You are wrong, there is …’ ‘Why, do you not say yourself that the sky and the birds prove God?’ – ‘No.’ – ‘Does your religion not say so?’ – ‘No. For though it is true in a sense for some souls whom God has enlightened in this way, yet it is untrue for the majority.

When we want to correct someone usefully and show him he is wrong, we must see from what point of view he is approaching the matter, for it is usually right from that point of view, and we must admit this, but show him the point of view from which it is wrong. This will please him, because he will see that he was not wrong but merely failed to see every aspect of the question. Now, no one is annoyed at not seeing everything, but no one wants to be wrong; the reason for that may be that man is not by nature able to see everything, and by nature cannot be wrong from the point of view he adopts, as sense impressions are always true.

That is why those to whom God has given religious faith by moving their hearts are very fortunate, and feel quite legitimately convinced, but to those who do not have it we can only give such faith through reasoning, until God gives it by moving their heart, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. God alone is man’s true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vice, adultery, incest. Since losing his true good, man is capable of seeing it in anything, even his own destruction, although it is so contrary at once to God, to reason and to nature.

[7] Letter showing the usefulness of proofs, by the Machine. Faith is different from proof. One is human and the other a gift of God. The just shall live by faith.1 This is the faith that God himself puts into our hearts, often using proof as the instrument. Faith cometh by hearing.2 But this faith is in our hearts, and makes us say not ‘I know’ but ‘I believe’.

Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the material is new. In playing tennis both players use the same ball, but one plays it better. I would just as soon be told that I have used old words. As if the same thoughts did not form a different argument by being differently arranged, just as the same words make different thoughts when arranged differently!

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.

The will is one of the chief organs of belief, not because it creates belief, but because things are true or false according to the aspect by which we judge them. When the will likes one aspect more than another, it deflects the mind from considering the qualities of the one it does not care to see. Thus the mind, keeping in step with the will, remains looking at the aspect preferred by the will and so judges by what it sees there.

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it. By telling himself so often enough he convinces himself, because when he is alone he carries on an inner dialogue with himself which it is important to keep under proper control. Evil communications corrupt good manners.1 We must keep silence as far as we can and only talk to ourselves about God, whom we know to be true, and thus convince ourselves that he is.

[98]. How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping. But for that we should feel sorry rather than angry. Epictetus goes much further when he asks: Why do we not lose our temper if someone tells us that we have a headache, while we do lose it if someone says there is anything wrong with our arguments or our choice?

[36] Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

That is why gaming and feminine society, war and high office are so popular. It is not that they really bring happiness, nor that anyone imagines that true bliss comes from possessing the money to be won at gaming or the hare that is hunted: no one would take it as a gift. What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the burdens of office, but the agitation that takes our mind off it and diverts us. That is why we prefer the hunt to the capture.

This is one reason why modern people are so unprepared for death: death is the one thing society can’t do for you, the one thing that forces you to confront your trans-social self. We live as “the lonely crowd”, but we die one at a time.

Both very liberal and very conservative Protestants are deeply threatened by Catholicism. For the liberals, “the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic”, as Fr. Rutler gibes. And for many fundamentalists, Catholics are pagans, not even Christians: Church-worshipers, Pope-worshipers, Mary-worshipers, saint-worshipers, superstition-worshipers, sacrament-worshipers, idol-worshipers, and works-worshipers.

When we love a dog, we become more doggy, but when we know a dog, we raise it up to our own level: thought. When we know God, we drag him down to our anthropomorphic level, we make God more humanoid than he really is; but when we love God, we are raised up more closely to his level, we become more God-like than we were (for “God is love”).

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and sinners who think they are righteous.

Aceasta carte, precum oricare alta, este un rasad de fantasme menit unui culegator necunoscut. Oamenii au un instinct secret care-i indeamna sa caute divertismentul si ocupatia in afara, instinct care le vine din resentimentul mizeriei lor continue. Si mai au un alt instinct secret ramas din maretia naturii lor dintai, care-i face sa cunoasca faptul ca fericirea nu sta cu adevarat decat in repaos. Iar din aceste doua instincte contrare se plamadeste in ei o nazuinta confuza ce li se ascunde vederii in strafundurile sufletului, care-i indeamna sa tinda la repaos prin agitatie si sa isi inchipuie mereu ca satisfactia pe care deloc n-o au le va veni daca, depasind cateva greutati ce li se infatiseaza, vor putea sa isi deschida prin aceasta poarta repaosului. [ Pascal, Pensees, XXVI, 1 ] Daca magia e iubire, inversul nu e mai putin adevarat. Ce face indragostitul, prin toate gesturile, cuvintele, serviciile si darurile sale, decat nu sa creeze o retea magica in jurul obiectului dragostei sale? Toate mijloacele de persuasiune pe care le desfasoara sunt tot atatea mijloace magice, al caror scop este legarea celuilalt.

But all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.

No man who bothers about originality will ever be original; whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence about how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.