-
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.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal
-
There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.
Blaise Pascal -
It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal
-
To speak freely of mathematics, I find it the highest exercise of the spirit; but at the same time I know that it is so useless that I make little distinction between a man who is only a mathematician and a common artisan. Also, I call it the most beautiful profession in the world; but it is only a profession.
Blaise Pascal -
Quand on voit le style naturel, on est tout e tonne et ravi, car on s'attendait de voir un auteur, et on trouve un homme. When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.
Blaise Pascal -
It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one wants.
Blaise Pascal -
The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.
Blaise Pascal -
Not to be mad is another form of madness.
Blaise Pascal -
Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible. . . . We are then incapable of knowing of either what He is or if He is. . . .
Blaise Pascal
-
Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
Blaise Pascal -
Men blaspheme what they do not know.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.
Blaise Pascal -
Eloquence; it requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.
Blaise Pascal -
It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.
Blaise Pascal
-
All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal -
Things are always at their best in their beginning.
Blaise Pascal -
Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
Blaise Pascal -
Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
Blaise Pascal