Blaise Pascal Quotes
-
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.
-
Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
-
Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Either Christianity is true or it's false. If you bet that it's true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it IS true, you've gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it's false, you've lost nothing, but you've had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it's false, you've lost nothing. But if you bet that it's false, and it turns out to be true, you've lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell.
-
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.
-
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.
-
That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.
-
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
-
Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.
-
Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.
-
Why God has instituted Prayer:— To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.
-
Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
-
The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.