The state of man: inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

This aphoristic line comes from Blaise Pascal’s posthumously published notes known as the Pensées, drafted in the 1650s as materials for an intended Christian apologetic. In these fragments Pascal repeatedly diagnoses the human condition after the Fall: people are restless and unstable, unable to remain satisfied, and driven to seek distractions (“divertissement”) to escape awareness of their misery and mortality. The triad—instability, ennui, and anxiety—fits Pascal’s broader argument that neither worldly pleasures nor philosophical self-sufficiency can cure the deep unease at the center of human life, which for him points toward the need for grace and God.

Pascal compresses a bleak anthropology into three nouns. “Inconstancy” suggests our fickleness—shifting desires, opinions, and commitments—while “boredom” names the emptiness that appears when stimulation fades and we confront ourselves. “Anxiety” (often linked in Pascal to fear of death and meaninglessness) is the emotional undertow that returns whenever diversions fail. The sequence implies a cycle: we change pursuits because we are bored; we seek novelty to quiet anxiety; yet our very instability prevents lasting satisfaction. In Pascal’s framework, this is not merely psychological observation but a theological diagnosis: the human heart is disproportionate to finite goods, so only an infinite good can settle it.