The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedGeorges Poulet
Title QuotedStudies in Human Time
Date (Year/Month/Day)1968/05/01
ImprintBaltimore : Johns Hopkins Press. 1956
QuotationPascal said, "It is the joy of having found God which is the source of the sorrow of having offended Him." Pascal said, "He is not found except by the ways taught by the Gospel. He is not preserved except by the ways taught in the Gospel." "Thou wouldst not seek Me if thou hadst not already found Me." (cf. St. Bernard, Pascal) Of Pascal, Poulet says, "Lived time is for Pascal as it had been for St. Augustine. The present of an immediate consciousness in which appear and combine themselves with it retrospective and prospective movements which give to that present an amplitude and a boundless temporal density." [Note 5: Blaise Pascal (1623 62) was a child prodigy in mathematics and physics. From 1654 on, residing within the cloister of Port Royal, he concentrated on spiritual pursuits. His most famous literary works are the Pensees and Provincial Letters. The quotes here are from Poulet, Studies in Human Time, 74-95.]
Quotation SourceThe Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 7, 1967-1968.; Edited by Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1998, p. 93
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