“It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known [as the above rules], nothing more difficult to practice, or nothing more useful and universal.”

The Art of Persuasion

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known [as the above rules], nothing more difficult to practice,…" by Blaise Pascal?

Blaise Pascal144

French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Chri… 1623–1662

Related quotes

“As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

First Century, sect. 8.
Centuries of Meditations

“Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge

“Nothing in this world was more difficult than love.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

“Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)
Context: Nothing is more difficult than writing an autobiography. What should be emphasized? Just what is of general interest? It is advisable, above all, to write honestly and dispense with any of the conventional introductory protestations of modesty. For if one is called upon to tell about one's life so as to make the events that made it what it became useful to the general public, it can mean only that one must have already wrought something positive in life, accomplished a task that people recognize. Accordingly it is a matter of forgetting that one is writing about oneself, of making an effort to abjure one's ego so as to give an account, as objectively as possible, of one's life in the making and of one's accomplishments.