Pascal's Pensées - Blaise Pascal

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maker of witticisms, a bad character.

      47

      There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

      48

      When we find words repeated in a discourse, and, in trying to correct them, discover that they are so appropriate that we would spoil the discourse, we must leave them alone. This is the test; and our attempt is the work of envy, which is blind, and does not see that repetition is not in this place a fault; for there is no general rule.

      49

      To mask nature and disguise her. No more king, pope, bishop—but august monarch, etc.; not Paris—the capital of the kingdom. There are places in which we ought to call Paris, Paris, and others in which we ought to call it the capital of the kingdom.

      50

      The same meaning changes with the words which express it. Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them. Examples should be sought. …

      51

      Sceptic, for obstinate.

      52

      No one calls another a Cartesian[17] but he who is one himself, a pedant but a pedant, a provincial but a provincial; and I would wager it was the printer who put it on the title of Letters to a Provincial.

      53

      A carriage upset or overturned, according to the meaning To spread abroad or upset, according to the meaning. (The argument by force of M. le Maître[18] over the friar.)

      54

      Miscellaneous.—A form of speech, "I should have liked to apply myself to that."

      55

      The aperitive virtue of a key, the attractive virtue of a hook.

      56

      To guess: "The part that I take in your trouble." The Cardinal[19] did not want to be guessed.

      "My mind is disquieted." I am disquieted is better.

      57

      I always feel uncomfortable under such compliments as these: "I have given you a great deal of trouble," "I am afraid I am boring you," "I fear this is too long." We either carry our audience with us, or irritate them.

      58

      You are ungraceful: "Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss. "With reverence be it spoken. … " The only thing bad is their excuse.

      59

      "To extinguish the torch of sedition"; too luxuriant. "The restlessness of his genius"; two superfluous grand words.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      60

      First part: Misery of man without God.

      Second part: Happiness of man with God.

      Or, First part: That nature is corrupt. Proved by nature itself.

      Second part: That there is a Redeemer. Proved by Scripture.

      61

      Order.—I might well have taken this discourse in an order like this: to show the vanity of all conditions of men, to show the vanity of ordinary lives, and then the vanity of philosophic lives, sceptics, stoics; but the order would not have been kept. I know a little what it is, and how few people understand it. No human science can keep it. Saint Thomas[20] did not keep it. Mathematics keep it, but they are useless on account of their depth.

      62

      Preface to the first part.—To speak of those who have treated of the knowledge of self; of the divisions of Charron,[21] which sadden and weary us; of the confusion of Montaigne;[22] that he was quite aware of his want of method, and shunned it by jumping from subject to subject; that he sought to be fashionable.

      His foolish project of describing himself! And this not casually and against his maxims, since every one makes mistakes, but by his maxims themselves, and by first and chief design. For to say silly things by chance and weakness is a common misfortune; but to say them intentionally is intolerable, and to say such as that …

      63

      Montaigne.—Montaigne's faults are great. Lewd words; this is bad, notwithstanding Mademoiselle de Gournay.[23] Credulous; people without eyes.[24] Ignorant; squaring the circle,[25] a greater world.[26] His opinions on suicide, on death.[27] He suggests an indifference about salvation, without fear and without repentance.[28] As his book was not written with a religious purpose, he was not bound to mention religion; but it is always our duty not to turn men from it. One can excuse his rather free and licentious opinions on some relations of life (730,231)[29]; but one cannot excuse his thoroughly pagan views on death, for a man must renounce piety altogether, if he does not at least wish to die like a Christian. Now, through the whole of his book his only conception of death is a cowardly and effeminate one.

      64

      It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.

      65

      What good there is in Montaigne can only have been acquired with difficulty. The evil that is in him, I mean apart from his morality, could have been corrected in a moment, if he had been informed that he made too much of trifles and spoke too much of himself.

      66

      One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.

      67

      The vanity of the sciences.—Physical science will not console me for the ignorance of morality in the time of affliction. But the science of ethics will always console me for the ignorance of the physical sciences.

      68

      Men are never taught to be gentlemen, and are taught everything else; and they never plume themselves so much on the rest of their knowledge as on knowing how to be gentlemen. They only plume themselves on knowing the one thing they do not know.

      69

      The infinites, the mean.—When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.

      70

      Nature

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