There is nothing so consistent with reason as this denial of reason. - Blaise Pascal

Diversion. Sometimes, when I set to thinking the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles which they face at Court, or in war, giving rise to so many quarrels and passions, daring and often wicked enterprises and so on, I have often said the soul cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in a room. A man wealthy enough for life’s needs would never leave home to go to sea or besiege some fortress if he knew how to stay at home and enjoy it. (Page 32)

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the sea, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him.

Pride counterbalances all these miseries; man either hides or displays them, and glories in his awareness of them.