Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
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Without the knowledge of our wretchedness, the knowledge of God creates pride. With it, the knowledge of God creates despair. The knowledge of Christ offers a third way, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.
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Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
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When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.
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The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness--by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.
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When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true.
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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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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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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
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Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.
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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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Vanity is but the surface.
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When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
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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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Wisdom leads us back to childhood.
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If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.
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We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.
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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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Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
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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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In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.
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So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Therefore those who have known God, without knowing their wretchedness, have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves.
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Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.
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Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.