Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
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He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.
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May God never abandon me.
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There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
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If our condition were truly happy, we would not need diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves happy.
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The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.
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Jurisdiction is not given for the sake of the judge, but for that of the litigant.
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Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such as solar- and wind-derived electricity,. envisioned an age of "universal education and sustenance of all humanity". "The heart has reasons that reason does not understand."
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When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a labourer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.
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Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
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Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances.
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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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Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things beyond it.
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Le moi est ha|«s sable. The self is hateful.
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Voluptuousness, like justice, is blind, but that is the only resemblance between them.
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Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself.
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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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We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.
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Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.
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All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.
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When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there.
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How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.
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Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
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All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.