Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Pride counterbalances all our miseries, for it either hides them, or, if it discloses them, boasts of that disclosure. Pride has such a thorough possession of us, even in the midst of our miseries and faults, that we are prepared to sacrifice life with joy, if it may but be talked of.
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Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover 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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The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
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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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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.
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We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness--the eighth beatitude.
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Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.
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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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Rules necessary for axioms. Not to demand in axioms any but things perfectly evident.
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Rules for Axioms. I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admittied, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.
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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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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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These eight rules above contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.
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When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of if is generally right on this side,--and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case.
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The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.
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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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Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
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The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain anything from God, that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, and soon, in order that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, may be now subject to the creature.
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Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.
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C'est une maladie naturelle à l'homme de croire qu'il possède la vérité directement…
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All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.
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People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.
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How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.