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Part 12 of an occasional series
I am a collector of quotations. I have been ever since I learned how to write, I mean professionally, not in primary school.
I am particularly fond of what I like to call "pithy prose". These short quotations can cover an unlimited variety of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their ability to say more in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's like being able to pour a liter of liquid into a half-liter bottle.
They are superb examples of Mark Twain's famous dictum, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
In principle, all writers and public speakers are capable of producing pithy prose, but clearly some are better at it than others.
Any collection of pithy prose must necessarily be biased in terms of what it includes and excludes. I make no apologies for my selections, only for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to leave out.
No one will agree with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may even find some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.
We seldom learn anything of value from what we already agree with. Only those ideas that grate on our nerves can open our minds. As with oysters, irritation can produce pearls. So if anything you are about to read annoys or shocks you, try to think clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your current belief or shaken into re-examining it.
Either way, you win!
This article is part of an occasional series. In each article, I will be offering more amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. But just to be certain that we agree on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.
Pithy Prose: A quotation where at first you may not be quite certain what it means. But when you become certain, you become equally certain that it couldn't have been said better any other way. In short, big ideas in small packages.
If you have a better definition of pithy prose, please contact me. I would love to hear it.
Who Is Blaise Pascal?
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662), a contemporary Ren Descartes , was mathematical prodigy. At the age pf 16, he published a significant work on the geometry of conical sections. At the age of 19, he invented a mechanical calculating machine using gears. Together with Pierre de Fermat, he founded the modern theory of probability. In physics, Pascal's Law is the basis of the hydraulic press, hydraulic brakes, and other important applications. His chief philosophical work is titled simply "Penses" (Thoughts).
1. A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.
2. All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
3. All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
4. Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
5. Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
6. Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
7. Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
8. Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
9. Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
10. Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
11. Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.
12. Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
13. Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
14. If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
15. Imagination decides everything.
16. In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
17. It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
18. It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.
19. Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
20. Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
21. Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
22. Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.
23. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
24. Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
25. Men blaspheme what they do not know.
26. Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true.
27. Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
28. Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
29. Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
30. Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.
31. Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
32. People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.
33. Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
34. Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
35. Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
36. That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.
37. The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
38. The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
39. The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.
40. The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
41. The only shame is to have none.
42. The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.
43. The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.
44. There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
45. There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
46. Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
47. We never love a person, but only qualities.
48. When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
49. When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
50. Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.
51. You always admire what you really don't understand.
Previously in this series
Part 1 Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain
Part 2: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde
Part 3: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of People Named "W"
Part 4: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Anatole France
Part 5: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Ambrose Bierce
Part 6: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Friedrich Nietzsche
Part 7: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Anon
Part 8: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of People Named "H"
Part 9: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Johann Goethe
Part 10: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Wisdom of Eric Hoffer
Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal and a marketing communication consultant. He currently teaches a course in good writing and good speaking in Brussels , Belgium . His recently published book In the "I" of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) like a Professional is available from Story Publishers in Ghent , Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).
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