0198 Thoughts – Blythe Pascal (2)

Chapter Two: It is sad that man does not have God

1) Man must know himself: If this does not help to discover the truth, it at least helps to regulate one's own life.

2) The knowledge of external things does not comfort my moral ignorance in times of pain; yet knowledge of ethics can always comfort my ignorance of external science.

(3) Since all things are mutually causal, both supportive and aided, both indirect and direct, and since all things are bound together by a natural invisible bond which links the most distant and the most different; therefore I think it is impossible to know only the part and not the whole, nor can it know the whole without concretely knowing the part.

4) Justice and truth are two extremely delicate tips, and our tools are always too rough to touch them accurately. Even if they do, they will crash the tip, press down on the perimeter, and get closer to the error than to the truth.

5) The will is one of the main components of faith; not that it can form faith, but because the truth or falsity of things depends on which side of things we observe.

6) Life is nothing but an eternal illusion; we blindly deceive and flatter each other. No one is going to say what he says behind our backs to our faces. The connection between people is based only on this mutual deception; if everyone knows what their friend is saying behind his back, then no friendship can be maintained, even if it is sincere and unemotional.

7) Man is nothing but cover-up, lies, and hypocrisy, and this is true of himself and to all men. He did not want others to tell him the truth, and he avoided telling the truth to others; and all these dispositions, which were so far removed from justice and reason, had a natural root in his heart.

8, what we pursue is never the thing itself, but the exploration of things.

(9) Man is clearly born for thought; this is his whole dignity and all his merits; and his whole duty lies in thinking in an appropriate manner. And the order of thought begins with the self, from his Creator and his destiny.

10 The only thing that can alleviate our suffering is pastime, but it is also our greatest suffering. For it is mainly it prevents us from thinking about ourselves and is quietly destroying us.

11 The past and the present are our means, and only the future is our end. So we are never living, we are only living in hope; since we are always ready to be happy people, it is inevitable that we will never be happy.

12 The big man and the little man have the same ups and downs, the same troubles, and the same passion; yet one is at the top of the wheel, and the other is close to the center, so that the wheels are also turned with less bumps.

13, we take things to block our own view, after not seeing the cliff, we will run towards the cliff without worry.

Chapter Three: On the Necessity of Betting

1) People are sensitive to small things and numb to big things, marking a strange reversal.

Chapter IV: Means of Faith

(1) Reason is slow to act, it has so many opinions, so many principles, and these principles must always be present; as a result, reason is always sleepy or disoriented, because not all principles are present. It feels like it doesn't act that way; it acts quickly and is ready to act. We must therefore put our faith in our senses; otherwise, faith will always waver.

2) Faith is a good expression of what the senses do not say, and faith is beyond it, not the opposite.

3) The final step of reason is to admit that there are infinitely many things beyond the scope of reason.

4) Either they affirm that everything is provable because they do not know how to prove it; or they doubt everything because they do not know where they must obey; or they obey everything, that is, they do not know where they must use judgment.

5) There is nothing more in line with reason than this denial of reason.