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They men have corrupted this God's supernatural order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.
Blaise Pascal -
Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.
Blaise Pascal
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There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices.
Blaise Pascal -
This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
Blaise Pascal -
Rules necessary for axioms. Not to demand in axioms any but things perfectly evident.
Blaise Pascal -
Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.
Blaise Pascal -
Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.
Blaise Pascal -
What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.
Blaise Pascal
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God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.
Blaise Pascal -
Custom determines what is agreeable.
Blaise Pascal -
Generally we are occupied either with the miseries which now we feel, or with those which threaten; and even when we see ourselves sufficiently secure from the approach of either, still fretfulness, though unwarranted by either present or expected affliction, fails not to spring up from the deep recesses of the heart, where its roots naturally grow, and to fill the soul with its poison.
Blaise Pascal -
A doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and... the knowledge of one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which man himself is scarcely ever conscious.
Blaise Pascal -
This right which you have, is not founded any more than his upon any quality or any merit in yourself which renders you worthy of it. Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the state of boatman or that of duke; and there is no natural bond that attaches them to one condition rather than to another.
Blaise Pascal -
Thus he had a double thought: the one by which he acted as king, the other by which he recognized his true state, and that it was accident alone that had placed him in his present condition.
Blaise Pascal
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Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.
Blaise Pascal -
Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.
Blaise Pascal -
If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize, by a more secret but truer thought, that you have nothing naturally superior to them.
Blaise Pascal -
These eight rules above contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.
Blaise Pascal -
Rules necessary for definitions. Not to leave any terms at all obscure or ambiguous without definition; Not to employ in definitions any but terms perfectly known or already explained.
Blaise Pascal -
Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
Blaise Pascal
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Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
Blaise Pascal -
By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.
Blaise Pascal -
There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.
Blaise Pascal -
It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
Blaise Pascal