Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.
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Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
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We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.
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Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
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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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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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Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
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Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
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Imagination decides everything.
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When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
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The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice.
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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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All the good maxims which are in the world fail when applied to one's self.
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The best defense against logic is ignorance.
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...for the truth is always older than all the opinions men have held regarding it; and one should be ignoring the nature of truth if we imagined that the truth began at the time it came to be known.
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To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.
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It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.
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There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
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Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. For it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing. This universality is the best. If we can have both, still better; but if we must choose, we ought to choose the former.
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When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.
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What amazes me most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness.
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Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
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The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.
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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.