Pensées

The full text of one of the most important religious and philosophical works of the seventeenth century, gathered into a single, navigable edition.

Blaise Pascal did not live to finish the great apology for the Christian faith that he had begun. What survived him was a vast collection of notes, fragments, and meditations — on the misery and grandeur of man, the famous "wager," the limits of reason, the corruption of justice, the hidden God, the prophecies, the miracles, and the testimony of Jesus. Editors have arranged these fragments many ways. This edition follows Léon Brunschvicg's classical ordering in fourteen thematic sections, in W. F. Trotter's 1910 English translation, prefaced by T. S. Eliot's 1958 introduction to the Dutton edition and closed by the editor's notes.

What you hold is the entire Pensées, not a selection. Every numbered fragment appears in order. The text is set for comfortable reading: clean typography, consistent paragraphing, navigable section structure, and a single short editor's preface that explains the conventions of the original. Footnote markers point to the gathered notes at the back of the book for context on names, classical allusions, and biblical references.