Blaise Pascal Quotes
-
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.
-
When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
-
The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.
-
The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
-
Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.
-
How can anyone lose who chooses to become a Christian? If, when he dies, there turns out to be no God and his faith was in vain, he has lost nothing...If, however, there is a God and a heaven and a hell. then he has gained heaven and his skeptical friends have lost everything.
-
The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
-
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.
-
If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.
-
Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master-the root, the branch, the fruits-the principles, the consequences.
-
Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday.
-
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.
-
Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.
-
I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.
-
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
-
Faith is a gift of God.
-
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.
-
[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.
-
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
-
Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable.
-
Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.
-
Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?
-
The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.
-
All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.