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Blaise Pascal Thoughts: Selected And Translated
Originally published in 1908, this book contains selections from Pascal's Pensees, translated into English. The text is divided into two main parts: the first part concerns the 'Misery of Man without God'; the second part discusses the 'Happiness of Man with God'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Pascal and his theological ideas.
- GenresPhilosophyTheology
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1900
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About the author
Blaise Pascal
1,452 books817 followersEarly work of Blaise Pascal of France included the invention of the adding machine and syringe and the co-development with Pierre de Fermat of the mathematical theory of probability; later, he, a Jansenist, wrote on philosophy and theology, notably as collected in the posthumous
Pensées
(1670).
This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous Leviathan (1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.
A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the Provincial Letters , against the Jesuits in 1657.
Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”
Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.
This contemporary of René Descartes attained ten years of age in 1633, when people forced Galileo Galilei to recant his belief that Earth circled the Sun. He lived in Paris at the same time, when Thomas Hobbes in 1640 published his famous Leviathan (1651). Together, Pascal created the calculus.
A near-fatal carriage accident in November 1654 persuaded him to turn his intellect finally toward religion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal rode in a carriage across a bridge in a suburb of Paris, a fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. The carriage, bearing Pascal, survived. Pascal took the incident as a sign and devoted. At this time, he began a series, called the Provincial Letters , against the Jesuits in 1657.
Pascal perhaps most famously wagered not as clearly in his language as this summary: "If Jesus does not exist, the non Christian loses little by believing in him and gains little by not believing. If Jesus does exist, the non Christian gains eternal life by believing and loses an infinite good by not believing.”
Sick throughout life, Pascal died in Paris from a combination of tuberculosis and stomach cancer at 39 years of age. At the last, he confessed Catholicism.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 15, 2017
Read this in French, when I was 18. Very impressive. Later I read the whole work, see Pensées, but that impressed me much less. I think I'm gonna give it a third try.
February 4, 2025
Necessary read for anyone! (not only as a christian conversion tactic)
I just think maybe eternal damnation is slightly important to question at some point, but take your time! :)
I just think maybe eternal damnation is slightly important to question at some point, but take your time! :)
June 30, 2018
Here are a few of my favorite passages:
(13) Whoever will consider himself thus will grow frightened of himself, and, considering himself suspended in the mass which nature has given him between these two abysses of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, he will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I believe that, his curiosity changing into marvelment, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to seek them out in presumption.
(17) “What is the self? A man goes to the window to see the people passing by; if I pass by, can I say he went there to see me? No, for he is not thinking of me in particular. But what about a person who loves someone for the sake of her beauty; does he love her? No, for smallpox, which will destroy beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to his love for her. And if someone loves me for my judgment or my memory, do they love me? me, myself? No, for I could lose these qualities without losing my self. 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.Let us then stop scoffing at those who win honor through their appointments and offices, for we never love anyone except for borrowed qualities.”
(24)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.
(57) As I am writing down my thought, it escapes me sometimes, but that makes me remember my weakness, that I keep forgetting all the time; this recognition is as instructive as the thought I had forgotten, for I tend only to know my nothingness
(131) Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
(168) As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
(171) The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this, we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us and leads us unconsciously to death.
(13) Whoever will consider himself thus will grow frightened of himself, and, considering himself suspended in the mass which nature has given him between these two abysses of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, he will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I believe that, his curiosity changing into marvelment, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to seek them out in presumption.
(17) “What is the self? A man goes to the window to see the people passing by; if I pass by, can I say he went there to see me? No, for he is not thinking of me in particular. But what about a person who loves someone for the sake of her beauty; does he love her? No, for smallpox, which will destroy beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to his love for her. And if someone loves me for my judgment or my memory, do they love me? me, myself? No, for I could lose these qualities without losing my self. 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.Let us then stop scoffing at those who win honor through their appointments and offices, for we never love anyone except for borrowed qualities.”
(24)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.
(57) As I am writing down my thought, it escapes me sometimes, but that makes me remember my weakness, that I keep forgetting all the time; this recognition is as instructive as the thought I had forgotten, for I tend only to know my nothingness
(131) Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
(168) As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
(171) The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this, we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us and leads us unconsciously to death.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 6, 2019
His proof of Christianity is really assumptive but his view on it and society are deep.
January 25, 2019
The first half is superb. His extremely bleak view of humanity is darkly funny in some places, despair inducing in others
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August 12, 2025Once, I tried to catch a falling star with my bare hands; instead, I grasped only cold smoke and the echo of my own foolishness
August 7, 2020
Belated review, but reading a book published in a similar volume/design made me think of Blaise. Struggling to get through a few middle-of-the-line books this summer has since reaffirmed my impression that Pascal is one of the best prose writers I’ve read. His language is so philosophically condensed it can be said to be poetical; his observations are so penetrating and grounded in experience that they are eminently readable and enriching; he writes with a rare sense of urgency (sometimes comically Christian) about the problems he sees. Any fair-minded reader would recognize Pascal as an existentialist of the first order and not confuse his wagers and theologies with any kind of existential complacency — his words read like those spoken from a contemporary: a friend to the enduring reader.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews