Blaise Pascal Quotes
-
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.
-
The truth about nature we discover with our brains. The truth about religion we discover with our hearts.
-
Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
-
He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.
-
It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.
-
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
-
The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.
-
If god does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.
-
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
-
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.
-
All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.
-
Eloquence; it requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.
-
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.
-
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.
-
All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.
-
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.
-
Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.
-
If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?
-
As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
-
We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.
-
The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.
-
Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
-
Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere.
-
There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.