Translated by H.F. Stewart

Pascal’s "pensées" (thoughts) are ideas for a book he planned in defense of faith in a rational world. Compiled after his death in 1662, these fragments reveal a profoundly original thinker who had resolved for himself the conflict between his scientific mind and his heart-felt faith.

The book begins with an analysis of the difference between mathematical and intuitive thinking, and goes on to consider the value of skepticism, contradictions, feeling, memory, and imagination. Much of the value of Pensées results from the clarity with which Pascal was able to present his intuitive thoughts.

Pascal spent much of his life composing this magnum opus, which offers some of the most powerful aphorisms about human experience and behavior ever written.