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It would be easy to compile a book of sayings from Balzac that would make all "Maximes" and "Pensées," even those of La Rochefoucauld or Joubert, seem trivial and shallow. Balzac was the great moral influence of my life, and my reading culminated in the "Comédie Humaine."

I paid him ten crowns out of my own pocket, and these have never been reimbursed me. Diderot had promised me a retribution on the part of the booksellers, of which he has never since spoken to me nor I to him. This undertaking of the 'Encyclopedie' was interrupted by his imprisonment. The 'Pensees Philosophiquiest' drew upon him some temporary inconvenience which had no disagreeable consequences.

But to speak of the author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ of the problems on the Cycloid, and finally of the ‘Pensées,’ as if his intellect had suffered from his conversion, is to use words without meaning.

Pascal's masterpiece is the "Pensees de la Religion;" it consists of fragments of thought, without apparent connection or unity of design. These thoughts are in some places obscure; they contain repetitions, and even contradictions, and require that arrangement that could only have been supplied by the hand of the writer.

"In these two volumes of pensees," said M. Renan, "without any sacrifice of truth to artistic effect, we have both the perfect mirror of a modern mind of the best type, matured by the best modern culture, and also a striking picture of the sufferings which beset the sterility of genius.

He is one of those men who are superior to their works, and who have themselves the unity which these lack. This first judgment is, besides, indiscriminate and severe. I shall have to modify it later. February 20th. I have almost finished these two volumes of Pensees and the greater part of the Correspondance.

No library which contains Pascal's "Provinciales" and "Pensées" should be without it. "Of all the monuments of the French language," says M. Cousin, in the Avant-propos to this new edition, "none is more celebrated than the work 'Les Pensées, and French literature possesses no artist more consummate than Pascal.

But there are hardly any of higher culturenone certainly of higher thoughtfulnessto whom the ‘Pensées’ are not still attractive, and who have not sought in them at one time or another some answer to the obstinate questionings which the deeper scrutiny of human life and destiny is ever renewing in the human heart.

But he soon formed the design of abandoning science for pursuits exclusively religious, and circumstances arose which became the occasion of those "Provincial Letters," which, with the "Pensees de la Religion," are considered among the finest specimens of French literature. The abbey of Port Royal occupied a lonely situation about six leagues from Paris.

Mme. de Sablé had remarkable gifts; her mission in politics, religion, and literature seems to have been to excite to action, to stimulate and to bring out to its fullest value, the talents and genius of others. In her modest salon, she inspired the great and illustrious work which will keep her memory alive as long as the Maxims and Pensées are read.