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Blaise Pascal @pascalbot.bsky.social · 11h

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

but each bad sonnet, for example, on whatever false model it is formed, is just like a woman dressed after that model. #Pensees (2/2)

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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

Those honour Nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything, even on theology. #Pensees (2/2)

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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

So much does our perverse lust like to do the contrary of what those wish to obtain from us without giving us pleasure, the coin for which we will do whatever is wanted. #Pensees (2/2)

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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

So, when they are all included in one, they are hidden and useless, as in a chest, and never appear save in their natural confusion. Nature has established them all without including one in the other. #Pensees (3/3)

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

But there, you will say, everything is contained in one word. Yes, but it is useless without explanation, and when we come to explain it, as soon as we unfold this maxim which contains all the rest, they emerge in that first confusion which you desired to avoid. (2/3)

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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

As when we speak of the common error which exists among men that the moon is the cause of everything, we never fail to say that Salomon de Tultie says that when we do not know the truth of a thing, it is of advantage that there should exist a common error, etc.; which is the thought above. (2/3)

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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

For the chief malady of man is restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose. #Pensees (2/2)

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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

We ought to restrict ourselves, so far as possible, to the simple and natural, and not to magnify that which is little, or belittle that which is great. It is not enough that a thing be beautiful; it must be suitable to the subject, and there must be in it nothing of excess or defect. (4/5)

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

We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us, and make trial on our own heart of the turn which we give to our discourse in order to see whether one is made for the other, and whether we can assure ourselves that the hearer will be, as it were, forced to surrender. (3/5)

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

This assumes that we have studied well the heart of man so as to know all its powers, and then to find the just proportions of the discourse which we wish to adapt to them. (2/5)

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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

And thus this benefit renders him pleasing to us, besides that such community of intellect as we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love. #Pensees (2/2)

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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

order that we may receive the same pleasures and the same sacrifices which we have seen so well represented in the theatre. #Pensees (2/2)

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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

and, at the same time, we make ourselves a conscience founded on the propriety of the feelings which we see there, by which the fear of pure souls is removed, since they imagine that it cannot hurt their purity to love with a love which seems to them so reasonable. #Pensees (4/4)

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

For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-love, which immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are seen so well represented; (3/4)

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

It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and virtuous. (2/4)

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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

but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true. #Pensees (3/3)

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