Pensées Quotes

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.”

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”

“If we do not secure the foundation, we cannot secure the edifice.”

“I make no doubt... that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.”

“Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.”

“These eight rules [above] contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.”

“Rules necessary for axioms. Not to demand in axioms any but things perfectly evident.”

“The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.”

“Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.”

“Several particular maxims... are as powerful, although false, in carrying away belief, as those the most true.”

“The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.”

“Five [of the above] rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error.”

“Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives.”

“FEU. Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.”

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”

“As soon as the soul has been made to perceive that a thing can conduct it to that which it loves supremely, it must inevitably embrace it with joy.”

“God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.”

“Do not imagine that it is less an accident by which you find yourself master of the wealth which you possess, than that by which this man found himself king.”

“No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.”

“God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.”

“These five rules [above] form all that is necessary to render proofs convincing, immutable, and to say all, geometrical; and the eight rules together render them even more perfect.”

“Thus he had a double thought: the one by which he acted as king, the other by which he recognized his true state, and that it was accident alone that had placed him in his present condition.”

“C'est une maladie naturelle à l'homme de croire qu'il possède la vérité directement… • Variant translation: It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.”

“Rules necessary for definitions. Not to leave any terms at all obscure or ambiguous without definition; Not to employ in definitions any but terms perfectly known or already explained.”

“If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.”