Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

This is probably my favourite read – for pleasure purposes mainly so I am simply including a list of quotes I enjoyed. I have tried to identify which quotes were most relatable in terms of course themes but I will not go into any discussion.

This book very much reminded me of the writings of Mencius.

Reason

9 –“Reason may object in vain, it cannot fix the price of things.”
10-“Reason never wholly overcomes imagination, while the contrary is quite common.”

54 “is it right, then, that reason should submit when it judges that it ought to submit.”

55 “two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”

127 “the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.”

Passion

115 “To render passion harmless let us behave as though we had only a week to live.”
124 “if you are unable to believe, it is because of your passions”

Faith (and James’ contract)

33 “There is no certainty, apart from faith, as to whether man was created by a good God, an evil demon, or just by chance, and so it is a matter of doubt, depending on our origin, whether these innate principles are true, false or uncertain.”

34 “Man transcends man”.

49 “he has so little knowledge of what God is that he does not know what he is himself.”

131 “it is an incomprehensible spell, a supernatural torpor that points to an omnipotent power as its cause.”

Nature

60 “Nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere. In short it is the greatest perceptible mark of God’s omnipotence that our imagination should lose itself in that thought.”

Serres :The Wager
123 “if you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing.” (quoted by Serres)
122 “Either God is or he is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong?”

Lucretian/Epicurian

13 “We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us.”
13 “Since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never
be so.”

39 “Telling a man to rest is the same as telling him to live happily. It means advising him to enjoy a completely happy state which he can contemplate at leisure without cause for distress. It means not understanding nature.”

45 “experience deceives us, and leads us on from one misfortune to another until death comes as the ultimate and eternal climax.”

Werther!Smart!Dostoevsky!

29 “Thus it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but there is greatness in knowing one is wretched.”

Descartes

37 “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”

Soul meets Body

65 “man is to himself the greatest prodigy in nature, for he cannot conceive what body is, and still less what mind is, and least of all how a body can be joined to a mind. This is his supreme difficulty, and yet it is his very being. The way in which minds are attached to bodies is beyond man’s understanding, and yet this is what man is.”