Blaise Pascal Quotes
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The arithmetical machine produces effects that approach nearer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing that would enable us to attribute will to it, as to the animals.
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Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
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The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.
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Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.
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The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live.
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How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.
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If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.
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Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
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To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. [Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]
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Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.
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Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.
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Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering.
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Not the zeal alone of those who seek Him proves God, but the blindness of those who seek Him not.
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The Christian's God does not merely consist of a God who is the Author of mathematical truths and the order of the elements. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the Christians, is a God of love and consolation.
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It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.
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The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
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Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable.
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The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.
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[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.
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There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.
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The stream is always purer at its source.
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Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched; but it is being great to know that one is wretched.
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It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.
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At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.