Cæsar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with conquering the world. This amusement was well enough for Augustus or Alexander; they were young people, whom it is difficult to stop; but Cæsar ought to have been more mature.
That is as if you should reverse the tube of your telescope, with the result of seeing the object observed made smaller instead of larger.
The following sentence might be a “Maxim” of La Rochefoucauld. Pascal was, no doubt, a debtor to him as well as to Montaigne:
I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what others say of them there would not be four friends in the world.
Here is one of the most current of Pascal’s sayings:
Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.
The following “Thought” condenses the substance of the book proposed into three short sentences:
The knowledge of God without that of our misery produces pride. The knowledge of our misery without that of God gives despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is intermediate, because therein we find God and our misery.
The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual coldness of Pascal’s “Thoughts” yield to a touch from the heart, and become pathetic, in such utterances as the following, supposed to be addressed by the Saviour to the penitent seeking to be saved:
Console thyself; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not found me.