Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
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Wisdom leads us back to childhood.
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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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To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.
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And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?
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The world is satisfied with words. Few appreciate the things beneath. [Fr., Le monde se paye de paroles; peu approfondissement les choses.]
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Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.
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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
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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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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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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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Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
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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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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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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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The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.