Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.
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Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny.
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They men have corrupted this God's supernatural order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.
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I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.
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All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.
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If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.
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Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations; for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object. Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.
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I can approve of those only who seek in tears for happiness.
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It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.
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Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.
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Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.
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Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander; they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature.
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By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.
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Several particular maxims... are as powerful, although false, in carrying away belief, as those the most true.
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We must make good people wish that the Christian faith were true, and then show that it is.
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What is it, in your opinion, to be a great nobleman? It is to be master of several objects that men covet, and thus to be able to satisfy the wants and the desires of many. It is these wants and these desires that attract them towards you, and that make them submit to you: were it not for these, they would not even look at you; but they hope, by these services... to obtain from you some part of the good which they desire, and of which they see that you have the disposal.
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All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.
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It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.
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It is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, [if we were to show them our proofs of the existence of God] nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt. . . .
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We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any pointand to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us.
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There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices.
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Custom determines what is agreeable.
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It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
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What a difficult thing it is to ask someone's advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem.