Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against vanity want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it.
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The sweetness of glory is so great that, join it to what we will, even to death, we love it.
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All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.
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Undoubtedly equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men has made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might--so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good.
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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 strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
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Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.
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That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.
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Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
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That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.
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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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Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
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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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Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.
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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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Quelque e tendue d'esprit que l'on ait, l'on n'est capable que d'une grande passion. However vast a man's spirit, he is only capable of one great passion.
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Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.
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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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Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.
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Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything...
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A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.
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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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For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.
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It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.