Question 1

What is the best book to start with?

Accepted Answer

The thinking-reed fragment and the wager fragment, in a translation that prints Sellier or Lafuma numbers The reed is the anthropology. The wager is the practical argument. Reading them as one proverb loses both.

Question 2

What is the most famous quote?

Accepted Answer

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Blaise Pascal that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” (Pensées, the thinking-reed fragment (Lafuma 200 / Sellier 231), Paraphrase or translation).

Question 3

What is the most misquoted line?

Accepted Answer

None of the lines this library files for Blaise Pascal is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

Question 4

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Accepted Answer

Thinking reed: Human dignity is thought in a being fragile enough for a vapour to kill, not a fantasy of control.