Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject. (Blaise Pascal)

Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject.

Blaise Pascal

Related topics

abject christianity counterpoise desire dignity humiliation man strange vain

Related quotes

Christianity brought something new and revolutionary: freedom and unconditional dignity for each individual, regardless of his religion, culture or nationality. But the East and the West have parted ways since the Crusades.

Walter Kasper

Whereas the good news had first been published for its own sake with no concern for success, now ineluctably success brought, as always, a desire for it. ... They were not aware of what was happening, namely, that society was inverting Christianity instead of being subverted by it.

Jacques Ellul

Abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation degrade, as much as indiscriminate contradiction and noisy debate disgust. But a modest assertion of one's own opinion, and a complaisant acquiescence in other people's, preserve dignity.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

They draw back into themselves, and are thrown back on their own bodies for gratification. The men become narcissistic and uncertain of the power of any woman, no matter how strange and beautiful, to arouse their desire, but the women remain continually receptive to male advances.

Margaret Mead

You embody all that I was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and strange purity. Therefore it is evident I do not see in you merely Count Emmerick's third sister, but, instead, that ageless lovable and loving woman long worshipped and sought everywhere in vain by all poets.

James Branch Cabell