Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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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Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
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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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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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All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.
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Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.
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All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.
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Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
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Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.
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It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.
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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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If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?
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It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.
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All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.
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Il y a deux sortes d'esprits, l'un ge ome trique, et l'autre que l'on peut appeler de finesse. Le premier a des vues lentes, dures et inflexibles; mais le dernier a une souplesse de pense e. There are two kinds of mind, one mathematical, the other what one might call the intuitive. The first takes a slow, firm, inflexible view, but the latter has flexibility of thought.
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Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth, he shuns saying it to others; and all these moods, so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart.
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Eloquence; it requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.
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There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.
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We do not rest satisfied with the present.... So imprudent we are that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not thinkof the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us.
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The truth about nature we discover with our brains. The truth about religion we discover with our hearts.
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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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It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.
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It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
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The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.