<i>'Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, and walk therein.'</i> - Blaise Pascal

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. God alone is man’s true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vice, adultery, incest. Since losing his true good, man is capable of seeing it in anything, even his own destruction, although it is so contrary at once to God, to reason and to nature.

It is natural for the mind to believe, and for the will to love; [47] so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.