Five [of the above] rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error. - Blaise Pascal

This internal war of reason against the passions has made a division of those who would have peace into two sects. The first would renounce their passions, and become gods; the others would renounce reason, and become brute beasts. (Des Barreaux.) [157] But neither can do so, and reason still remains, to condemn the vileness and injustice of the passions, and to trouble the repose of those who abandon themselves to them; and the passions keep always alive in those who would renounce them.

How I hate these follies of not believing in the Eucharist, &c.! If the Gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?

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