Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.
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If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.
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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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Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things beyond it.
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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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If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.
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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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We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.
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In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
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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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All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.
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May God never abandon me.
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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.
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Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself.
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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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Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.
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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.
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No animal admires another animal.
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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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We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.
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All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.
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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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Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.