Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.

This remark comes from Blaise Pascal’s posthumously published notes known as the Pensées, compiled after his death (1662) from fragments intended for an “Apology for the Christian religion.” Written amid the religious and moral controversies of 17th‑century France (including Pascal’s Jansenist milieu at Port‑Royal), the Pensées repeatedly stress the paradox of the human condition: greatness and wretchedness, reason and appetite, aspiration and corruption. The line appears in a section reflecting on moral psychology and the dangers of spiritual pride—especially the attempt to transcend ordinary human limits by pretending to be purely “angelic,” which can rebound into hypocrisy, cruelty, or vice.

Pascal argues that human beings occupy an unstable middle state: we are not pure spirit (“angel”) nor mere instinct (“beast”). Because of this mixed nature, attempts to live as if one were above bodily needs, passions, and social constraints can produce the opposite of virtue. The person who “acts the angel” may deny ordinary weaknesses rather than govern them, and that denial can erupt as self-righteousness, repression, or moral collapse—“acting the beast.” The aphorism is a warning against perfectionism and spiritual pride: genuine morality begins with clear-eyed acceptance of human limits and the disciplined ordering of desire, not with theatrical claims to purity.

1) “Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.”
2) “Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that whoever wants to act the angel acts the beast.”
3) “He who plays the angel plays the beast.”