I love poverty because He loved it.

I love riches because they afford me the means of helping the very poor.

I keep faith with everybody;

I do not render evil to those who wrong me,

but I wish them a situation like mine, in which I receive neither good nor evil from men.

I try to be just, true, sincere, and faithful to all men;

I have a tender heart for those to whom God has more closely united me;

and whether I am alone, or seen by people,

I do all my actions in the sight of God,

who must judge them, and to whom I have consecrated them all.

These are my sentiments; and every day of my life,

I bless my Redeemer, who has implanted them in me, and who,

out of a man full of weakness, of miseries, of lust, of pride, and of ambition,

has made a man free from all these evils by the power of His grace,

to which all the glory of it is due, as of myself I have only misery and error.

... Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)