Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Let each of us examine his thoughts.
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The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.
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Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.
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One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.
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To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.
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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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When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.
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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.
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To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
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Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them.
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The law required what it could not give. Grace gives that which it requires.
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There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.
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Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado toward God.
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Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
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Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.
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Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
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You gave me health that I might serve you; and so often I failed to use my good health in your service. Now you send me sickness in order to correct me Grant that, having ignored the things of spirit when my body was vigorous, I may now enjoy spiritual sweetness while my body groans with pain.
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The more intelligence one has, the more people one finds original. Commonplace people see no difference between men.
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Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
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Vanity is but the surface.
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All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.
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It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!
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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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We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.