Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.
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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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Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.
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Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.
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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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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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All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.
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Look for the truth, it wants to be found.
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True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of morality.
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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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Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go. [Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.]
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Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.
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[Christianity] endeavors equally to establish these two things: that God has set up in the Church visible signs to make himself known to those who should seek him sincerely, and that he has nevertheless so disguised them that he will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart.
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Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
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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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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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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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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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That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth. [Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]
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Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
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Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.
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Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
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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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How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!