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Pascal’s Pensees

“Belief is natural to the mind, and it is natural for the will to love: so much so that if valid objects be lacking they will necessarily attach themselves to false ones.”

“Men despise religion; they hate it, and fear to find that it may be true. We need to deal with this situation by showing that religion is certainly not contrary to reason, but deserving of reverence: We must inspire respect for it. Then we must make it attractive, so that men of goodwill may wish that it were true; and then demonstrate that it is true. Deserving of reverence, because it well knows what is in man; attractive, because it offers him his truest good.”

“There are but three classes of men: those who have found God and serve him; those that have not yet found him, but seek him earnestly; those who spend their lives neither seeking nor finding. The first know where the true values lie, and they are happy; the last are stupid and unhappy; the class in the middle are unhappy, but they are rational.”

“The Christian religion contains two major dogmas; it is just as important that man should know them as it is dangerous that he should remain in ignorance of them. Moreover, it is part of the mercy of God that he has given man signs of both. Christianity then, instructs men on two truths: that there is a God whom they may know, and that there is in human nature something corrupted which renders men unworthy. These are the two dogmas which it is equally important that men should know; and it is as dangerous that they should know God, yet refuse to recognize their own misery, as it is to be conscious of their misery without knowledge of the Redeemer, who can heal it. It is knowledge of one only of these dogmas which has been the cause either of the pride of philosophers, who have acquired some knowledge of God, but not of their own wretchedness, or of the despair of atheists, who know their wretchedness, but not their Redeemer.”

“Men often mistake the imagination for the heart, and they believe themselves converted as soon as the idea of conversion comes into their heads.”

“My knowledge of the physical sciences will not console me in times of affliction for my ignorance of the moral law. But the moral law will always comfort me and make up what I lack in knowledge of the physical sciences.”

“Let them at least understand the nature of the religion they are attacking, before they begin the attack. If this religion prided itself that it had a clear vision of God, that it possessed him openly and unveiled, then it would be a sufficiently damaging attack if they said they found no evidence on earth to justify such a claim. But since this religion says precisely the opposite, maintaining that men live in a darkness far removed from God, that God has hidden himself from them, that this is the very name that he gives himself in the Scriptures, Deus absconditus, ‘the hidden God’ [Isaiah 14:15]. And if, finally, this religion also strives to establish two things, that God has set visible signs in the Church, whereby he will be recognized by those who seek him sincerely, but that he has nevertheless concealed those signs, so that he will only be seen by those who seek him with their whole heart, what good does it do them to profess indifference to the search for truth and yet to cry out that nothing reveals it to them? The very darkness in which they live, and which they use as an objection against the Church, does but prove one of the things the Church maintains, and that without reference to the other; so far from destroying anything, the existence of that darkness supports the Church’s teaching.”

“Pity those atheists who seek: Are they not sufficiently unhappy? Reproach only those who plume themselves upon their unbelief.”

“Faith is a different thing from the arguments that justify faith. The one is human, but the other is the gift of god: ‘As it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live’ [Romans 1:17]. He shall live by this faith which God himself plants in the heart and which he strengthens by trials. ‘Faith comes from what is heard’ [Romans 10:17], but this kind of faith is in our hearts, and it makes us say, not, ‘I know,’ but ‘I believe.'”

“It would be superstitious to base your hope upon ceremonies, but it would be pride to refuse to make use of them.”

“Our religion is wisdom and foolishness: wisdom, because it is richest in understanding, richest also and strongest in its wealth of miracles, prophecies, etc.; foolishness because it is not for any of these things that we are members of it. Her wisdom and her foolishness alike are a condemnation of those who willfully remain outside her, but they are not the reasons for the belief of those who are her members. The one ground of the Christian belief is the cross, ‘lest the cross be emptied of its power’ [1 Cor. 1:17].”

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