Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only go so far, but faith has no limits.
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Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
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Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.
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The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness--by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.
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If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.
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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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When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a labourer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.
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Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
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Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is.
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There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.
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Everything that is incomprehensible does not, however, cease to exist.
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Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.
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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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The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.
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Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
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Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?
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When intuition and logic agree, you are always right.
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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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Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
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We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.
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It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!
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Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.
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(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.
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I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.