-
Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)
Blaise Pascal -
When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.
Blaise Pascal
-
The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.
Blaise Pascal -
When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.
Blaise Pascal -
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal
-
Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.
Blaise Pascal -
I make no doubt... that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.
Blaise Pascal -
The incredulous are the more credulous. They believe the miracles of Vespasian that they may not believe those of Moses. [Fr., Incredules les plus credules. Ils croient les miracle de Vespasien, pour ne pas croire ceux de Moise.]
Blaise Pascal -
For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?
Blaise Pascal
-
Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
No one is discontented at not being a king except a discrowned king ... unhappiness almost invariably indicates the existence of a road not taken, a talent undeveloped, a self not recognized.
Blaise Pascal -
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
Blaise Pascal -
Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal
-
Not the zeal alone of those who seek Him proves God, but the blindness of those who seek Him not.
Blaise Pascal -
The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.
Blaise Pascal -
There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
Blaise Pascal -
Those great efforts of intellect, upon which the mind sometimes touches, are such that it cannot maintain itself there. It only leaps to them, not as upon a throne, forever, but merely for an instant.
Blaise Pascal