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If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? — Voltaire · 1759The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. — Blaise Pascal · 1662I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away? — Voltaire · 1759Men blaspheme what they do not know. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. — Voltaire · 1759All 20 quotes →
Middle Ages3 quotes
Where true love is, it showeth; it will not feign. — Christine de Pizan · 1399I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain. — Charles d'Orleans · 1440The season has shed its mantle of wind and chill and rain. — Charles d'Orleans · 1440
If youth knew; if age could. — Henri Estienne · 1594