Blaise Pascal Quotes
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To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.
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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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I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
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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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The stream is always purer at its source. [Fr., Les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur source.]
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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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The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
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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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That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.
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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 parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.
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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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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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There is a lot of difference between tempting and leading into error. God tempts but does not lead into error. To tempt is to provide opportunities for us to do certain things if we do not love God, but putting us under no necessity to do so. To lead into error is to compel a man necessarily to conclude and follow a falsehood.
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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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Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.
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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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Men blaspheme what they do not know.
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Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.
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Not to be mad is another form of madness.
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(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.
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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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En un mot, l'homme conna|"t qu'il est mise rable: il est donc mise rable, puisqu'il l'est; mais il est bien grand, puisqu'il le conna|"t. In one word, man knows that he is miserable and therefore he is miserable because he knows it; but he is also worthy, because he knows his condition.
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There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.