"Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I..." - Quote by Blaise Pascal

“When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true.”

“To understand is to forgive.”

“That which makes us go so far for love is that we never think that we might have need of anything besides that which we love.”

“To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish.”

“Hence it is from the representation of things spoken by means of posture and gesture that the whole of the art of dance has been elaborated.”

“Oh, well, if you want original conversations, you'd better go and talk to yourself.”

“Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.”

“It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one...that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.”

“we left about midnight and walked down the hill in silence. the night was muggy, and all around me i felt the same pressure, a sense of time rushing by while it seemed to be standing still. whenever i thought of time in puerto rico, i was reminded of those old magnetic clocks that hung on the walls of my classrooms in high school. every now and then a hand would not move for several minutes -- and if i watched it long enough, wondering if it had finally broken down, the sudden click of the hand jumping three for four notches would startle me when it came.”