[Marginalia]
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge Print: Book
'The individual...was a fellow-worker of mine for nigh two years in Dartmoor. He had, in his younger days, passed through the workhouse; read the pestilent literature of rascaldom which has educated so many criminal characters in this country; then graduated in the "School", and ultimately became a noted burglar. His reading in prison had been pretty extensive, while his intelligence would have insured him a position in society above that of a labouring man... I could not help looking upon it as a very novel experience, for even this grotesque world, to have to listen to a man who could delight in a literary discussion, quote all the choice parts of Pope's "Illiad", and boast of having read Pascal and Lafontaine in the original, maintain, in sober argument, that "thieving was an honourable pursuit", and that religion, law, patriotism and bodily disease were the real and only enemies of humanity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'I was reading Pascal's "lettres provinciales". None can help admiring his wit & probity. He sustains excellently the character of [italics]naivet?[end italics]which he has assumed - and with infinite dexterity, hunts the jesuits thro' all their doublings and subterfuges, till he has triumphantly exposed the wretched baseness of their conduct. It is pity that the Salvation of Europe required the reestablishment of this vile order of men.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
Thursday 13 July 1939: 'A bad morning [...] 2 hours at M[ecklenburgh]S[quare].[...] A grim thought struck me: wh. of these rooms shall I die in? Which is going to be the scene of some -- oh no, I wont write out the tragedy that has to be acted there [...] So I read Pascal & Pater & wrote letters & cooked dinner & did my embroidery. But couldnt sleep sound.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I also sent for Bishop Watson's Apology for the Bible, in Letters to T. Paine; Bishop Porteus's Compendium of the Evidences of Christianity, Butler's Divine Analogy, Paley's Evidences of Christianity, Pilgrim's Good Intent, Pascal's Thoughts, Addison's Evidences of Christianity, Conibeare on Revealed Religion, Madam de Genlis's Religion the only Basis of Happiness and sound Philosophy, with Observations on pretended modern Philosophers, 2 vols. Jenkin's Reasonableness and Certainty of Christianity, and several others of the same tendency. Those excellent defences of revealed religion I read through, during which I had many struggles . . . '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington Print: Book
'In the interval between morning and evening service, he [Johnson] endeavoured to employ himself earnestly in devotional exercises; and as he has mentioned in his "Prayers and Meditations", gave me "Les Pensees de Pascal", that I might not interrupt him. I preserve the book with reverence. His presenting it to me is marked upon it with his own hand, and I have found in it a truly divine unction.'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Books read by Oscar Wilde in Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons, June - November 1895: St Augustine, "Confessions" and "De Civitate Dei"; Pascal, "Pensees" and "Provincial Letters"; Walter Pater, "Studies in the History of the Renaissance"; T. Mommsen, "The History of Rome" (5 vols); Cardinal Newman, "The Grammar of Ascent", "Apologia Pro Vita Sua", "Two Essays on Miracles" and "The Idea of a University".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
Except Shakespeare, who grew from childhood as
part of myself, nearly every classic has come with
this same shock of almost intolerable enthusiasm:
Virgil, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Dante, Chaucer
and Milton and Goethe, Leopardi and Racine, Plato
and Pascal and St Augustine, they have appeared,
widely scattered through the years, every one like
a 'rock in a thirsty land', that makes the world
look different in its shadow.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Freya Stark Print: Unknown
