Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Voluptuousness, like justice, is blind, but that is the only resemblance between them.
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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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Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.
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Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and finds fault with him who escapes it at whichever end... To leave the mean is to abandon humanity.
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The God of the infinite is the God of the infinitesimal.
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That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.
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Eloquence is a way of saying things in such a way, first, that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure, and second, that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.
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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
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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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Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
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I have spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences; but the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such subjects disgusted me with them. When I began to study man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to him, and that in diving into them, I wandered farther from my real object than those who knew them not, and I forgave them for not having attended to these things. I expected then, however, that I should find some companions in the study of man, since it was so specifically a duty. I was in error. There are fewer students of man than of geometry.
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Philosophers.-We are full of things which take us out of ourselves.
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There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.
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Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.
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Wisdom leads us back to childhood.
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Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
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Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.
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The world is satisfied with words. Few appreciate the things beneath. [Fr., Le monde se paye de paroles; peu approfondissement les choses.]
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Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado toward God.
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Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.
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It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one wants.
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Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
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In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.
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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.