Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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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Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you.
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Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
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We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.
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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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All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.
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Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.
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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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Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
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The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
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True eloquence scorns eloquence.
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What matters it that man should have a little more knowledge of the universe? If he has it, he gets little higher. Is he not always infinitely removed from the end, and is not the duration of our life equally removed from eternity, even if it lasts ten years longer?
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Since [man] is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing from which he was made, and the infinite in which he is swallowed up.
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Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it is opinion that uses the force. [Fr., La force est la reine du monde, et non pas l'opinion; mais l'opinion est celle qui use de la force.]
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Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
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Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
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Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.
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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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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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If god does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.
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Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them.
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That which makes us go so far for love is that we never think that we might have need of anything besides that which we love.
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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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We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.