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It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.
Blaise Pascal -
The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.
Blaise Pascal
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The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
Blaise Pascal -
Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.
Blaise Pascal -
Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.
Blaise Pascal -
It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.
Blaise Pascal -
Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.
Blaise Pascal -
If it had pleased them the legislators to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.
Blaise Pascal
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To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. There are two equally dangerous extremes- to shut reason out, and not to let nothing in.
Blaise Pascal -
Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.
Blaise Pascal -
If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.
Blaise Pascal -
Several particular maxims... are as powerful, although false, in carrying away belief, as those the most true.
Blaise Pascal -
The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.
Blaise Pascal -
All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.
Blaise Pascal
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It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.
Blaise Pascal -
It is necessary to have regard to the person whom we wish to persuade, of whom we must know the mind and the heart, what principles he acknowledges, what things he loves; and then observe in the thing in question what affinity it has with the acknowledged principles, or with the objects so delightful by the pleasure which they give him.
Blaise Pascal -
They men have corrupted this God's supernatural order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.
Blaise Pascal -
Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
Blaise Pascal -
Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander; they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature.
Blaise Pascal -
The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
Blaise Pascal
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Rules necessary for axioms. Not to demand in axioms any but things perfectly evident.
Blaise Pascal -
Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.
Blaise Pascal -
Rules for Definitions. I. Not to undertake to define any of the things so well known of themselves that the clearer terms cannot be had to explain them. II. Not to leave any terms that are at all obscure or ambiguous without definition. III. Not to employ in the definition of terms any words but such as are perfectly known or already explained.
Blaise Pascal -
Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.
Blaise Pascal