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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 10h

Nothing makes us understand better the ridiculousness of a false sonnet than to consider nature and the standard, and then to imagine a woman or a house made according to that standard. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

And as there is a perfect relation between a song and a house which are made after a good model, because they are like this good model, though each after its kind; even so there is a perfect relation between things made after a bad model. Not that the bad model is unique, for there are many; (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, rooms, dress, etc. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

All the false beauties which we blame in Cicero have their admirers, and in great number. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting. The rule is uprightness. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man. Whereas those who have good taste, and who seeing a book expect to find a man, are quite surprised to find an author. Plus poetice quam humane locutus es. (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference, and based also on the face of man; whence it happens that symmetry is only wanted in breadth, not in height or depth. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Miscellaneous. Language.—Those who make antitheses by forcing words are like those who make false windows for symmetry. Their rule is not to speak accurately, but to make apt figures of speech. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Eloquence.—It requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Language.—We should not turn the mind from one thing to another, except for relaxation, and that when it is necessary and the time suitable, and not otherwise. For he that relaxes out of season wearies, and he who wearies us out of season makes us languid, since we turn quite away. (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I had as soon it said that I used words employed before. And in the same way if the same thoughts in a different arrangement do not form a different discourse, no more do the same words in their different arrangement form different thoughts! #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own place. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Order.—Why should I undertake to divide my virtues into four rather than into six? Why should I rather establish virtue in four, in two, in one? Why into Abstine et sustine rather than into "Follow Nature," or, "Conduct your private affairs without injustice," as Plato, or anything else? (1/3)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftenest quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life. (1/3)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions which we employ. (1/5)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way—(1) that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Eloquence, which persuades by sweetness, not by authority; as a tyrant, not as a king. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

One likes to see the error, the passion of Cleobuline, because she is unconscious of it. She would be displeasing, if she were not deceived. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The doctor, who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has said everything, so full is he of the desire of talking. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Scaramouch, who only thinks of one thing. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

So we depart from the theatre with our heart so filled with all the beauty and tenderness of love, the soul and the mind so persuaded of its innocence, that we are quite ready to receive its first impressions, or rather to seek an opportunity of awakening them in the heart of another, in (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre. (1/4)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. (1/3)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as they listen to vespers. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The understanding and the feelings are moulded by intercourse; the understanding and feelings are corrupted by intercourse. Thus good or bad society improves or corrupts them. It is, then, all-important to know how to choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Just as we harm the understanding, we harm the feelings also. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Those who judge of a work by rule are in regard to others as those who have a watch are in regard to others. One says, "It is two hours ago"; the other says, "It is only three-quarters of an hour." I look at my watch, and say to the one, "You are weary," and to the other, "Time gallops with (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

For it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Mathematics, intuition.—True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight, and are not used to seek for principles. (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

There are then two kinds of intellect: the one able to penetrate acutely and deeply into the conclusions of given premises, and this is the precise intellect; the other able to comprehend a great number of premises without confusing them, and this is the mathematical intellect. (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

And in spite of that these persons would perhaps not be great mathematicians, because mathematics contain a great number of premises, and there is perhaps a kind of intellect that can search with ease a few premises to the bottom, and cannot in the least penetrate those matters in which there (1/2)

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

For example, the former easily learn hydrostatics, where the premises are few, but the conclusions are so fine that only the greatest acuteness can reach them. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Others draw conclusions well where there are many premises. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

There are different kinds of right understanding; some have right understanding in a certain order of things, and not in others, where they go astray. Some draw conclusions well from a few premises, and this displays an acute judgment. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

And men of intuition who are only intuitive cannot have the patience to reach to first principles of things speculative and conceptual, which they have never seen in the world, and which are altogether out of the common. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Mathematicians who are only mathematicians have exact minds, provided all things are explained to them by means of definitions and axioms; otherwise they are inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only right when the principles are quite clear. #Pensees

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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

But dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical. #Pensees

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