Blaise Pascal

Quotes

1. The philosophers did not prescribe feelings proportionate to the two states.

   They inspired impulses of pure greatness, and this is not man's state.

   They inspired impulses of pure lowliness, and this is not man's state.

2. 

   There are some that see clearly that man has no other enemy than lust, which turns him from God, and not God; and that he has no other good than God, and not a rich land. Let those who believe that the good of man is in the flesh, and evil in what turns him away from sensual pleasures, [satiate] themselves with them, and [die] in them. ...I shall make them see that a Messiah has been promised, who should deliver them from their enemies, and that One has come to free them from their iniquities, but not from their enemies.

3. 

   When the word of God, which is really true, is false literally, it is true spiritually.

4. 

   Contradiction. ...Thus, to understand Scripture, we must have a meaning in which all the contrary passages are reconciled. ...We must then seek for a meaning which reconciles all discrepancies. ...If we take the law, the sacrifices, and the kingdom as realities, we cannot reconcile all the passages. They must then necessarily be only types. We cannot even reconcile the passages of the same author, nor of the same book, nor sometimes of the same chapter, which indicates copiously what was the meaning of the author.

5. 

   Two great revelations are these. (1) All things happened to them in types: vere Israëlitæ, vere liberi, true bread from Heaven. (2) A God humbled to the Cross. It was necessary that Christ should suffer in order to enter into glory, "that He should destroy death through death." Two advents.

6. 

   An older translation is (Isaac Taylor, 1838):

7. 

   How greatly then ought we to value those who interpret the cipher, and teach us to understand the hidden meaning, especially if the principles which they educe are perfectly clear and natural! This is what Jesus Christ did, and the Apostles. They broke the seal; He rent the veil, and revealed the spirit. They have taught us through this that the enemies of man are his passions; that the Redeemer would be spiritual, and His reign spiritual; that there would be two advents, one in lowliness to humble the proud, the other in glory to exalt the humble; that Jesus Christ would be both God and man.

8. 

   Do all these passages indicate what is real? No. Do they then indicate what is typical? No, but what is either real or typical.

9. 

   This popular (since at least 1910) paraphrase most tellingly omits faux/false,

10. 

    Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same.

11. 

    A type conveys absence and presence, pleasure and pain. A cipher has a double meaning, one clear, and one in which it is said that the meaning is hidden.

12. 

    The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.