Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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.
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Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
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All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.
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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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All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
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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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Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.
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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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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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E? loquence quipersuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran, non en roi. Eloquence should persuade gently, not by force or like a tyrant or king.
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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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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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Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.
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I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.
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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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To understand is to forgive.
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Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
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The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
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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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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.