Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719) was a French Jansenist theologian. He led the Jansenists (followers of the Dutch Bishop Cornelius Jansen’s heretical doctrines on predestination, free will, and grace) through the persecution by King Louis XIV of France until they were papally condemned.
Born in Paris, Quesnel studied at the Sorbonne, and in 1662 became director of the Paris Oratory, where he wrote Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament (1692, ‘Reflections on Morality on the New Testament.’) In 1675, he published the works of Pope Leo I, the Great, which was placed on the Roman Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Latin: “Index of Forbidden Books”) because of Quesnel’s Gallicanism (the belief that popular civil authority over the Catholic Church is comparable to that of the Pope.)
Quesnel refused to condemn Jansenism in 1684 and fled to Brussels. There he lived with the exiled theologian Antoine Arnauld, champion of the Jansenist resistance, and published the Réflexions (1687–94.) The Jesuits were persistent in their hostility, and Quesnel was thrown into prison (1703) but escaped to Amsterdam. His book was condemned in the Unigenitus Papal Bull (1713.)
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We pass our life in deliberation, and we die upon it.
—Pasquier Quesnel
Topics: Procrastination
There is no greater punishment than that of being abandoned to one’s self.
—Pasquier Quesnel
Topics: Punishment
Of journeying the benefits are many: the freshness it bringeth to the heart, the seeing and hearing of marvelous things, the delight of beholding new cities, the meeting of unknown friends, and the learning of high manners.
—Pasquier Quesnel
Topics: Travel
The truth only irritates those it enlightens, but does not convert.
—Pasquier Quesnel
Topics: Truth
Zeal is very blind, or badly regulated, when it encroaches upon the rights of others.
—Pasquier Quesnel
Topics: Enthusiasm
Anger causes us often to condemn in one what we approve in another.
—Pasquier Quesnel
Topics: Anger
Men are more inclined to ask curious questions, than to obtain necessary instruction.
—Pasquier Quesnel
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