Book · 10 chapters · 3 hr 1 min read

Letters and Minor Works

Translated by M. L. Booth and O. W. Wight

Blaise Pascal · 1623–1662

Reading difficulty: Advanced

Free to read·No account needed

Letters to His Sisters

Begin reading
Search

About this book

Pascal the man, in his own hand. Here are the letters to his sisters in the first fervour of the family's conversion; the long letter written after his father's death, one of the great Christian meditations on dying; and the letters of spiritual counsel to Mademoiselle de Roannez, written in the year of the Provincial Letters. Beside them stand his shorter works: the Prayer to ask of God the right use of sickness, composed in the illness that marked his last years; the Conversion of the Sinner; his comparison of the first Christians with those of his own day; and his conversation with M. de Saci on Epictetus and Montaigne, the germ of the Pensées.

January 26, 1648. My Dear Sister, We have received your letters. I intended to reply to the first that you wrote me more than four months since, but my indisposition and some other things prevented me. Since then I have not been in a condition to write, either on account of my illness, for want of leisure, or for some other reason.
From Letters to His Sisters

Contents · 10 chapters · 3 hr 1 min read

  1. 1 Letters to His Sisters 19 min
  2. 2 On the Death of His Father 25 min
  3. 3 Letters to Mademoiselle de Roannez 27 min
  4. 4 Other Letters 16 min
  5. 5 Prayer to Ask of God the Right Use of Sickness 18 min
  6. 6 On the Conversion of the Sinner 7 min
  7. 7 Comparison Between Christians of Early Times and Those of To-Day 7 min
  8. 8 Discourses on the Condition of the Great 11 min
  9. 9 Conversation with M. de Saci on Epictetus and Montaigne 29 min
  10. 10 The Art of Persuasion 21 min

Public domain. Source text from the original edition.

Camille Pissarro, “Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen (Effect of Sunlight)” (1898). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access.