Imagine someone's saying:  "All tools serve to modify something.  Thus the hammer modifies the position of the nail, the saw the shape of the board, and so on." – And what is modified by the rule, the glue-pot, the nails? – "Our knowledge of a thing's length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of the box." – Would anything be gained by this assimilation of expressions?

— Wittgenstein, Phil. Inv., § 14

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The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no time to make it shorter.

— Pascal, Prov. Ltrs., No. XVI

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It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater.  The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded.  He repeated his warning; they shouted even louder.

So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke.

— Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1, p. 30

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We must combine outward and inward to obtain anything from God; in other words, we must go down on our knees, pray with our lips, etc., so that the proud man who would not submit to God must now submit to his creature.

If we expect help from this outward part we are being superstitious, if we refuse to combine it with the outward we are being arrogant.

— Pascal, Penseés, ¶ 944

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What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s resurrection?  I play, as it were, with the thought.

If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like every human being.  He is dead and decomposed.  In that case he is a teacher like any other, and he can no longer help.  And we are once more orphaned and alone, and we have to make do with wisdom and speculation.  It is as though we are in a hell, where we can only dream and are shut out from heaven, roofed in as it were.

But if I am to be really redeemed, I need certainty — not wisdom, dreams, speculation — and this certainty is faith.  And faith is faith in what my heart, my soul, needs, not my speculative intellect.  For my soul, with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, must be redeemed, not my abstract mind. ...

So this can only come about if you no longer support yourself on this earth but suspend yourself from heaven.  Then everything is different and it is 'no wonder' if you can then do what now you cannot do.

(It is true that someone who is suspended looks like someone who is standing but the interplay of forces within him is nevertheless a quite different one & hence he is able to do quite different things than can one who stands.)

— Wittgenstein, Culture & Value, p. 38