Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Why God has instituted Prayer:— To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.
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How shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies.
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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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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.
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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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Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.
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Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.
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That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.
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The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.
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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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To understand is to forgive.
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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.
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It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.
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Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
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Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.
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All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.
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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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Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
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Mediocrity makes the most of its native possessions.
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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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Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
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True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.... To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
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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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The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.