Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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 only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
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Nature has some perfections to show that she is the image of God, and some defects to show that she is only His image.
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God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.
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Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true and then show that it is.
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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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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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There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
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To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
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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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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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One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it, sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another.
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The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.
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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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If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
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To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!
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To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
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The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
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I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.
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These five rules above form all that is necessary to render proofs convincing, immutable, and to say all, geometrical; and the eight rules together render them even more perfect.
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I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.
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It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known as the above rules, nothing more difficult to practice, or nothing more useful and universal.
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Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.