Blaise Pascal Quotes
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What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.
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All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.
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If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it's possible, in everything.
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Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
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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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The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
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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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A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.
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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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All men are almost led to believe not of proof, but by attraction. This way is base, ignoble, and irrelevant; every one therefore disavows it. Each one professes to believe and even to love nothing but what he knows to be worthy of belief and love.
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There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
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Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.
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How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?
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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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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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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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These eight rules above contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.
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Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.
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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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A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us.
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If ignorance were bliss, he'd be a blister.
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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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Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.
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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.