Blaise Pascal Quotes
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All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theater. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love.
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Don't try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.
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Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
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What a difficult thing it is to ask someone's advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem.
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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.
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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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[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.
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Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.
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Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.
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Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.
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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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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.
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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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If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.
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Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.
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We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.
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No animal admires another animal.
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When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. ...such community of intellect that we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love.
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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.
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Faith is a gift of God.
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If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.
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We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.
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At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.
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The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.