Blaise Pascal Quotes
-
[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.
-
As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.
-
Kind words produce their images on men's souls.
-
Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?
-
Look for the truth, it wants to be found.
-
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.
-
To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.
-
Vanity is but the surface.
-
Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.
-
Why God has instituted Prayer:— To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.
-
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.
-
We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.
-
One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
-
All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
-
There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.
-
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.
-
To understand is to forgive.
-
We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.
-
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
-
Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
-
It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.
-
If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest.
-
Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
-
A jester, a bad character.