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by Blaise Pascal
912 pensées from the unfinished apology - every fragment Pascal left when he died at thirty-nine. A new one each time you load the page.
tags: pascal, pensees, philosophy, moralist, jansenism, port-royal, wager, french, 17th century, christianity
“Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.” The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
- Pensées, IV, 277
In 1654 Blaise Pascal was thirty-one - already the inventor of the mechanical calculator, already a co-founder of probability theory, already the man who had ended Aristotelian physics by proving the existence of the vacuum. On the night of 23 November of that year, between 10:30 in the evening and 12:30 in the morning, he had a religious experience he would never speak of to anyone. He wrote it down on a single piece of parchment, beginning with the word “FIRE,” and sewed the parchment into the lining of his coat. It was found there after his death.
For the next eight years he worked on a Christian apology aimed at the unbelievers of the Parisian salons - a book meant to argue for the truth of the Christian religion not from authority but from the structure of human experience itself. He never finished it. He died in 1662 at thirty-nine. The notes for the book - short paragraphs, sometimes single sentences, written on bundles of paper Pascal had grouped, then dropped, then regrouped - were edited by his nephew and the Port-Royal solitaires and published in 1670. They have been arranged, rearranged, contested, restored, and translated continuously for three hundred and fifty years.
This archive uses the standard Brunschvicg ordering of 1897 in W. F. Trotter’s 1908 English translation - both public domain, both still in print. Nine hundred and twelve fragments, organized by Pascal’s probable thematic intent across fourteen sections.
A new pensée loads each time you open this page. Press ↻ DRAW to receive another. There is no order; there is no system. Pascal was the first to insist that there could not be one.
A new pensée each time the page loads. Press ↻ DRAW for another. Filter by section or search a phrase.
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“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”
- Pensées, VI, 347
MATHÉMATICIEN · PHYSICIEN · APOLOGISTE · PORT-ROYAL
Born in 1623 in Clermont in the Auvergne to a tax official and amateur scientist. Wrote a treatise on conic sections at sixteen. Built the first mechanical calculator at nineteen. Conducted the experiments on the void that ended Aristotle’s physics; gave his name to the unit of pressure. Co-founded probability theory by correspondence with Fermat. And then in November 1654, on a single night between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., he had a religious experience he would not speak of to anyone for the rest of his life. He sewed the record of it - the famous Mémorial, beginning “FIRE” - into the lining of his coat. It was found there after his death.
For the next eight years he worked, with the Jansenists at Port-Royal des Champs, on a Christian apology meant for the unbelievers of the Parisian salons. He never finished it. He died at thirty-nine. The notes for the unwritten book - written on bundles of paper Pascal had grouped by topic, then dropped, then grouped again - were edited and published by his nephew and the Port-Royal solitaires in 1670 as Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets. They have been arranged, rearranged, edited, restored, and translated continuously for three hundred and fifty years. This archive uses the standard Brunschvicg ordering of 1897, in W. F. Trotter’s 1908 English translation.
“Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.”
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
The text used here is W. F. Trotter’s English translation of the Pensées (J. M. Dent, 1908), arranged in the order established by Léon Brunschvicg in his 1897 edition (revised 1904). Both are in the public domain. The Brunschvicg ordering is the most widely cited and remains the reference for cross-translation citation, though twentieth-century editors (notably Lafuma in 1951 and Sellier in 1976) have reconstructed Pascal’s original bundles more carefully. For most readers, Brunschvicg / Trotter is still the entry.
The fourteen sections are Brunschvicg’s - they are an editorial reconstruction, not Pascal’s. He left twenty-seven titled bundles called liasses, plus an enormous mass of unsorted notes. The fragments are themselves untitled.
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
- Pensées, III, 206
Blaise Pascal · 19 June 1623 - 19 August 1662 · 39 years, 2 months. Buried at the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, Paris.
✦ memory · ☽ night · ∞ loops · ❧ margins · ◆ proof
a personal library in perpetual arrangement · MMXXVI