Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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.
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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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A few rules include all that is necessary for the perfection of the definitions, the axioms, and the demonstrations, and consequently of the entire method of the geometrical proofs of the art of persuading.
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Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.
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I make no doubt... that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.
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God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.
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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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Let man then contemplate nature in full and lofty majesty, and turn his eyes away from the mean objects which surround him. Let him look at the dazzling light hung aloft as an eternal lamp to lighten the universe; let him behold the earth, a mere dot compared with the vast circuit which that orb describes, and stand amazed to find that the vast circuit itself is but a very fine point compared with the orbit traced by the starts as they roll their course on high.
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There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.
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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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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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These eight rules above contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.
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Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.
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Without [diversion] we would be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.
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There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.
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The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from another than from himself at different times.
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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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The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.
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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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Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
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The only shame is to have none.
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If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.
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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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Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.