Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. - Blaise Pascal

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?

Anyone who wants to know the full extent of man's vanity has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a je ne sais quoi. (Corneille.) And its effects are terrifying. This indefinable something, so trifling that we cannot recognize it, upsets the whole earth, princes, armies, the entire world.

One, knowing the duties of man and being ignorant of his impotence, is lost in presumption, and that the other, knowing the impotence and being ignorant of the duty, falls into laxity; whence it seems that since the one leads to truth, the other to error, there would be formed from their alliance a perfect system of morals. But instead of this peace, nothing but war and a general ruin would result from their union; for the one establishing certainty, the other doubt, the one the greatness of man, the other his weakness, they would destroy the truths as well as the falsehoods of each other. So that they cannot subsist alone because of their defects, nor unite because of their opposition, and thus they break and destroy each other to give place to the truth of the Gospel. This it is that harmonizes the contrarieties by a wholly divine act, and uniting all that is true and expelling all that is false, thus makes of them a truly celestial wisdom in which those opposites accord that were incompatible in human doctrines.