Frost - pg. 303

Once changed, he hunkered in the hallway and read to me from his Pascal. It was always "about the whole tragedy," he said, I didn't understand what he meant by that. Always about "a single coarse act." He said: "Factor in lethality." And: "Death renders everything infamous." He was continually leaving, only to get out at some city of thought, interrupting his journey he had a destination "that would permit of no arrival, that discourages any arrival." I went up to my room and said to myself, but aloud, so that it bounced off the walls and its echo struck me: "I can't stand any more of this!" I lay down. I leafed through my Henry James, without giving the writer a thought. Walked to and fro. Lay down again.

Frost - pg. 37

A landscape of people. Because the people took on the colors of the landscape as I did myself, the only way of recognizing them was by their voices, and it was only by my voice that they knew me. Such differentiated voices, you know, incredibly differentiated voices! Suddenly something horrible happened: my head swelled up, to such a degree that the landscape grew darker, and the people broke out in wailing, such terrible wailing as I have never heard. Wailing that was somehow commensurate with the landscape. I can't say why. Since my head was suddenly so big and heavy, it started rolling down from the hill where I had been standing, down across the white pastures, the black snow -- all the seasons here seemed to be simultaneous! -- and crushed many of the blue trees and the people. I could hear that. Suddenly I noticed that everything in my wake was dead. Withered, crushed, dead. My big head lay in a dead wasteland. In darkness. It lay in that darkness until I awoke. How is it that my dream took such a horrible turn?" he asked me. The painter took his Pascal out of his left jacket pocket, and stowed it in his right. "It's uncanny," he said.

An Enquiry Concerning The Principles Of Morals - App: pg. 198

The foundation of DIOGENES'S conduct was an endeavour to render himself an independent being as much as possible, and to confine all his wants and desires and pleasures within himself and his own mind: The aim of PASCAL was to keep a perpetual sense of his dependence before his eyes, and never to forget his numberless wants and infirmities. The ancient supported by magnanimity, ostentation, pride, and the idea of his own superiority above his fellow creatures. The modern made constant profession of humility and abasement, of the contempt and hatred of himself; and endeavoured to attain these supposed virtues, as far as they are attainable. The austerities of the GREEK were in order to inure himself to hardhships, and prevent his ever suffering: Those of the FRENCHMAN were embraced merely for their own sake, and in order to suffer as much as possible. The philosopher indulged himself in the most beastly pleasures, even in public: The saint refused himself the most innocent, even in private. The former thought it his duty to love his friends, and to rail at them, and reprove them, and scold them: The latter endeavoured to be absolutely indifferent towards his nearest relations, and to love and speak well of his enemies. The great object of DIOGENES'S wit was every kind of superstition, that is every kind of religions known in his time. The mortality of the soul was his standard principle; and even his sentiments of a divine providence seem to have been licentious. The most ridiculous superstitions directed PASCAL's faith and practice; and an extreme contempt of this life, in comparison of the future, was the chief foundation of his conduct.

Hopscotch - pg. 401

THE business of the sophist, according to Aristophanes, is to invent new reasons.

Let us try to invent new passions, or to reproduce the old ones with a like intensity.

I shall analyze this conclusion once more, from a Pascalian point of view : true belief is somewhere in between superstition and libertinism.

José Lezama Lima, Tratados en La Habana