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Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own place.
Blaise Pascal -
We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.
Blaise Pascal
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Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Blaise Pascal -
I can readily conceive of a man without hands or feet; and I could conceive of him without a head, if experience had not taught me that by this he thinks, Thought then, is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him.
Blaise Pascal -
We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.
Blaise Pascal -
The philosophers talk to you about the dignity of man, and they tempt you to pride, or they talk to you about the misery of man, and they tempt you to despair.
Blaise Pascal -
One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it, sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another.
Blaise Pascal -
The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.
Blaise Pascal
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How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.
Blaise Pascal -
If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.
Blaise Pascal -
All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.
Blaise Pascal -
The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.
Blaise Pascal -
All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
Blaise Pascal -
It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.
Blaise Pascal
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To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.
Blaise Pascal -
There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.
Blaise Pascal -
To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!
Blaise Pascal -
Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things beyond it.
Blaise Pascal -
So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Therefore those who have known God, without knowing their wretchedness, have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves.
Blaise Pascal -
The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
Blaise Pascal
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Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it.
Blaise Pascal -
It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.
Blaise Pascal -
Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.
Blaise Pascal -
Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.
Blaise Pascal