This morning in my Elizabeth Bishop seminar, we discussed the reference to Blaise Pascal in her 1965 poem "Questions of Travel": "Or could Pascal have been not entirely right / about just sitting quietly in one's room? " I had dug up the line from Pascal's "Pensées": "I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber." But Bishop's poem also reminded me of Pascal's wager and his comment about long letters: "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." And the students even found connections to Pascal's Law in fluid mechanics. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 November 2025)