Pascals Pensees | Page 9

only an hour and a half ago, and I laugh at
those who tell me that time goes slowly with me, and that I judge by
imagination. They do not know that I judge by my watch.[4]

6
Just as we harm the understanding, we harm the feelings also.
The understanding and the feelings are moulded by intercourse; the
understanding and feelings are corrupted by intercourse. Thus good or
bad society improves or corrupts them. It is, then, all-important to
know how to choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; and
we cannot make this choice, if they be not already improved and not
corrupted. Thus a circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape
it.
7
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men.
Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
8
There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as they
listen to vespers.
9
When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he
errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that
side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the
side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he
was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one
is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be
mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally
cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he
looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.
10
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have
themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of

others.
11
All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all
those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than
the theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so
delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and,
above all, to that of love, principally when it is represented as very
chaste and virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls,
the more they are likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our
self-love, which immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects
which are seen so well represented; and, at the same time, we make
ourselves a conscience founded on the propriety of the feelings which
we see there, by which the fear of pure souls is removed, since they
imagine that it cannot hurt their purity to love with a love which seems
to them so reasonable.
So we depart from the theatre with our heart so filled with all the
beauty and tenderness of love, the soul and the mind so persuaded of its
innocence, that we are quite ready to receive its first impressions, or
rather to seek an opportunity of awakening them in the heart of another,
in order that we may receive the same pleasures and the same sacrifices
which we have seen so well represented in the theatre.
12
Scaramouch,[5] who only thinks of one thing.
The doctor,[6] who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has said
everything, so full is he of the desire of talking.
13
One likes to see the error, the passion of Cleobuline,[7] because she is
unconscious of it. She would be displeasing, if she were not deceived.
14

When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within
oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although
one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us
feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. And thus this
benefit renders him pleasing to us, besides that such community of
intellect as we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love.
15
Eloquence, which persuades by sweetness, not by authority; as a tyrant,
not as a king.
16
Eloquence is an art of saying things in such a way--(1) that those to
whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure; (2)
that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more
willingly to reflection upon it.
It consists, then, in a correspondence which we seek to establish
between the head and the heart of those to whom we speak on the one
hand, and, on the other, between the thoughts and the expressions
which we employ. This assumes that we have studied well the heart of
man so as to know all its powers, and then to find