Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Evil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good.
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Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.
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These eight rules above contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.
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If they have entered into the spirit if these rules, and if the rules have made sufficient impression on them to become rooted and established in their minds, they will feel how much difference there is between what is said here and what a few logicians may perhaps have written by chance approximating to it in a few passages of their works.
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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.
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We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.
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Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.
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The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.
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Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.
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It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
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God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?
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It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
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There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.
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Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.
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Le silence e ternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
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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.
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Nothing is more common than good things: the point in question is only to discriminate them; and it is certain that they are all natural and within our reach and even known to all mankind.
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Rules for Definitions. I. Not to undertake to define any of the things so well known of themselves that the clearer terms cannot be had to explain them. II. Not to leave any terms that are at all obscure or ambiguous without definition. III. Not to employ in the definition of terms any words but such as are perfectly known or already explained.
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Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
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A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.
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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.
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The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
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We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem.
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Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.