
What Our Diversions Reveal about Us (1670) - erwan
http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/pascal-diversion.html
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erwan

        143. Diversion.--Men are entrusted from infancy with the 
        care of their honour, their property, their friends, and 
        even with the property and the honour of 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, and that a single thing 
        wanting will make them unhappy.
    
        Thus they are given cares and business which make them 
        bustle about from break of day. It is, you will 
        exclaim, a strange way to make them happy!
    
        What more could be done to make them miserable?
        --Indeed! what could be done? We should only have
        to relieve them from all these cares; for then they
        would see themselves: they would  reflect on what they are,
        whence they came, whither they go, and thus we cannot employ
        and divert them too much.
    
        And this is why, after having given them so much
        business, we advise them, if they have some time for 
        relaxation, to employ it in amusement, in play,
        and to be always fully occupied.

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DoctorOetker
that's an excellent quote, and reminds me of what I wrote at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17936282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17936282)

(just ignore the first sentence/movie reference)

Edit: woops!

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sp332
You seem to have linked your entire account instead of a particular comment.

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DoctorOetker
thanks for pointing it out

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yesenadam
Oh, it's a selection from Pascal's _Pensées_ , for some reason not labelled
such.

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erwan
It's on the second line. The title is the name of the fragment.

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yesenadam
Yes, obviously I had to go to the site to learn that. I meant, there was no
indication on HN. I guess I commented because I was disappointed - I read a
lot of stuff from the 16th-19th C, and hadn't heard the title before, so I
expected something 'new'.

It's not a fragment, it's someone's selection from Pascal's book, one of the
most famous books of aphorisms, if not the most famous. It's not Pascal's
title.

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erwan
Ah I see what you mean

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analreceiver
He would've loved Buddhism

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rajangdavis
Very relevant to something I am experiencing now. Thanks for sharing

