"Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves"
About this Quote
Pascal’s comfort is barbed: time doesn’t heal because it’s kindly, but because it’s corrosive. The line smuggles in a quiet metaphysics of identity. Grief and conflict feel permanent only if the self is stable; Pascal denies that premise. What dissolves the quarrel isn’t justice or apology but a slow replacement of the people involved. The offender and offended don’t reconcile so much as get succeeded by later versions of themselves who inherit fewer reasons to keep the feud alive.
That’s a psychologically shrewd, almost cold consolation. It spares us the moral theater of closure and replaces it with drift: memory fades, priorities reorder, the story you tell about what happened loses its heat. Pascal is also poking at pride. We cling to injuries because they certify a coherent self - I am the one who was wronged. Time threatens that narrative, and that threat is oddly liberating: if I’m not the same person, why maintain the same bitterness?
The subtext carries Pascal’s broader project: humility before human instability. In the 17th-century context of religious conflict and intense moral scrutiny, this is a reminder that our certainties - including our resentments - are built on a moving platform. There’s an implied warning, too. If time “heals” by making us different, then loyalty, love, and faith are also vulnerable. The sentence comforts and unsettles in the same breath, which is exactly why it lasts.
That’s a psychologically shrewd, almost cold consolation. It spares us the moral theater of closure and replaces it with drift: memory fades, priorities reorder, the story you tell about what happened loses its heat. Pascal is also poking at pride. We cling to injuries because they certify a coherent self - I am the one who was wronged. Time threatens that narrative, and that threat is oddly liberating: if I’m not the same person, why maintain the same bitterness?
The subtext carries Pascal’s broader project: humility before human instability. In the 17th-century context of religious conflict and intense moral scrutiny, this is a reminder that our certainties - including our resentments - are built on a moving platform. There’s an implied warning, too. If time “heals” by making us different, then loyalty, love, and faith are also vulnerable. The sentence comforts and unsettles in the same breath, which is exactly why it lasts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Moving On |
|---|---|
| Source | Pensées (Thoughts), Blaise Pascal — contains the line beginning "Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons" in standard English translations of Pascal's Pensées. |
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