Blaise Pascal Quotes
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I would inquire of reasonable persons whether this principle: Matter is naturally wholly incapable of thought, and this other: I think, therefore I am, are in fact the same in the mind of Descartes, and in that of St. Augustine, who said the same thing twelve hundred years before.
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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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Il est non seulement impossible, mais inutile de conna|"tre Dieu sans Je sus-Christ. It is not only impossible, but also useless to recognize God without Jesus.
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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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Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
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Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
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When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is a restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.
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Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!
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When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
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Nobody is publicly accepted as an expert on poetry unless he displays the sign of poet, mathematician, etc., but universal men want no sign and make hardly any distinction between the crafts of poet and embroiderer. Universal men are not called poets or mathematicians, etc. But they are all these things and judges of them too. No one could guess what they are, and they will talk about whatever was being talked about when they came in. One quality is not more noticeable in them than another, unless it becomes necessary to put it into practice, and then we remember it.
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We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.
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Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.
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The stream is always purer at its source.
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We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real.
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The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
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Faith is a gift of God.
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Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself.
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May God never abandon me.
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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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Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday.
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I should not be a Christian but for the miracles.
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If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.
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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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The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.