Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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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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.
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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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The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
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To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. There are two equally dangerous extremes- to shut reason out, and not to let nothing in.
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It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
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These eight rules above contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.
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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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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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Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.
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We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.
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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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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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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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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.
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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 authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.
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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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A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.
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Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.
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Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than the thought of death without peril.
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There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.
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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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The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.