Blaise Pascal Quotes
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We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
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We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.
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Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room.
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If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
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Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.
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Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
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Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
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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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Who knows if this other half of life where we think we're awake is not another sleep a little different from the first.
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To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.
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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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Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he destroyed himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, in which he saved himself and the whole human race.
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By thought I embrace the universe.
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The great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man's true state.
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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 greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.
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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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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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Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go. [Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.]
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Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
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The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.
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Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
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For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.
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However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.