Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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?
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Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.
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We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.
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Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
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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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Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.
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Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
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The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
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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.
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Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
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How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!
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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 but the surface.
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Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
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Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
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Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
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The law required what it could not give. Grace gives that which it requires.
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True eloquence scorns eloquence.
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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.
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The eternal Being is forever if he is at all.
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Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
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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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The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.