Blaise Pascal Quotes
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We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; qualities that are in excess are so much at variance with our feelings that they are impalpable: we do not feel them, though we suffer from their effects.
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Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own feelings--their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of his baseness.
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To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction.
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Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.
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Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.
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Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
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Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.
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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and naturally loves itself; and it gives itself to one or the other, and hardens itself against one or the other, as it chooses...it is the heart that feels God, not the reason; this is faith.
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God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind.
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Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.
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People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
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The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!
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The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.
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We never love a person, but only qualities.
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Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.
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Curiosity is nothing more than vanity. More often than not we only seek knowledge to show it off.
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Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.
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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.
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I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.
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Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.
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It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.
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In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.
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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.
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The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.