Blaise Pascal Quotes
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To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.
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The sweetness of glory is so great that, join it to what we will, even to death, we love it.
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Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.
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What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.
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The imagination disposes of everything. It creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are the whole of the world.
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I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true.
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Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.
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The Stoics say, "Retire within yourselves; it is there you will find your rest." And that is not true. Others say, "Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in amusement." And this is not true. Illness comes. Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.
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The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
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Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind.
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When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
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There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.
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I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.
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Wisdom leads us back to childhood.
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Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.
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One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
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If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.
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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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Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
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Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
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Those who are clever in imagination are far more pleased with themselves than prudent men could reasonably be.
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All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.
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Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
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It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.