Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.
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Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of his soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair.
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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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If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.
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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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All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.
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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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Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
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Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.
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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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It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.
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Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject.
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When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from Him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil, yet it is innate.
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If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.
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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.
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Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire them.
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The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
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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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If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.
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The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.
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Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.
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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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Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.
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Not the zeal alone of those who seek Him proves God, but the blindness of those who seek Him not.