Blaise Pascal, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact: they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.1 This is not a casual observation. A man who has sufficient means, if he truly knew how to remain at home with pleasure, would not go to sea, would not besiege towns, would not buy a commission in the army at such cost.2 He seeks these things not because they contain happiness — we would not take the hare as a gift, were it simply handed to us — but because the chase itself, the bustle, the noise, averts the thoughts that would otherwise descend upon him.3
The reason for this flight is not obscure, once one looks at it directly. Our condition is one of natural poverty — feeble, mortal, miserable — and nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.4 Even a king, attended with every pleasure the world can furnish, if left without diversion to consider what he is, will necessarily fall into forebodings of danger, of revolution, of death and inevitable disease, and will be more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and amuses himself.5
This is why courtiers surround kings so carefully, so wonderfully attentive in ensuring the king is never alone with himself — because they know, without perhaps being able to say it, that he will be miserable the moment he meditates on what he is.6 So men are given, from infancy, cares and business and the study of languages and physical exercise, overwhelmed from break of day, precisely so they will not see themselves.7
And when a moment of relaxation threatens, they are advised to fill it with amusement, with play — always fully occupied. What a strange way to make men happy, one might exclaim. But remove the occupation, and you will see them dried up with weariness, feeling their nothingness without knowing it, in an insufferable sadness they cannot name.8
Here is the cruelty of the thing: diversion is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is the greatest of our miseries.9 It is the greatest because it principally hinders us from reflecting on ourselves, and leads us insensibly, unconsciously, to ruin and to death. Without it, the weariness that would descend might spur a man to seek something more solid — a more genuine escape from what afflicts him.
But diversion amuses, and in amusing, kills quietly.10 And notice what this reveals about our relation to time. We do not rest in the present. We anticipate the future as too slow, or recall the past to stop its flight — wandering in times that are not ours, neglecting the only moment that belongs to us.11 The present is generally painful; we conceal it, or if it is delightful, we regret its passing.
We are always preparing to be happy. It is therefore inevitable that we never are. Divertissement is not laziness, and it is not mere vice.12 It is the constitutive structure of fallen existence: the flight from what we are, toward what will keep us from knowing it. Man is obviously made to think — it is his whole dignity — and the order of thought is to begin with self, and with his Author, and his end. Divertissement is the precise, systematic avoidance of that beginning.13
all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.Pensées
A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town.Pensées
Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift.Pensées
there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.Pensées
when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease.Pensées
kings are surrounded with persons who are wonderfully attentive in taking care that the king be not alone and in a state to think of himself, knowing well that he will be miserable, king though he be, if he meditate on self.Pensées
Men are entrusted from infancy with the care of their honour, their property, their friends... They are overwhelmed with business, with the study of languages, and with physical exercise; and they are made to understand that they cannot be happy unless their health, their honour, their fortune and that of their friends be in good condition.Pensées
take away diversion, and you will see them dried up with weariness. They feel then their nothingness without knowing it; for it is indeed to be unhappy to be in insufferable sadness as soon as we are reduced to thinking of self, and have no diversion.Pensées
The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries.Pensées
it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.Pensées
We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming... or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us.Pensées
as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.Pensées
Man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now, the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end.Pensées