Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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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I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.
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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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I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.
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The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.
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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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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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FEU. Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.
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The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
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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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Several particular maxims... are as powerful, although false, in carrying away belief, as those the most true.
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Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.
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Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.
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Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.
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If it had pleased them the legislators to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.
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A doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and... the knowledge of one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which man himself is scarcely ever conscious.
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Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.
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Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.
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This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
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All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.
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Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.
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Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
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It is necessary to have regard to the person whom we wish to persuade, of whom we must know the mind and the heart, what principles he acknowledges, what things he loves; and then observe in the thing in question what affinity it has with the acknowledged principles, or with the objects so delightful by the pleasure which they give him.
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To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. There are two equally dangerous extremes- to shut reason out, and not to let nothing in.