Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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 manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.
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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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Logic has borrowed, perhaps, the rules of geometry, without comprehending their force... it does not thence follow that they have entered into the spirit of geometry, and I should be greatly averse... to placing them on a level with that science that teaches the true method of directing reason.
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Continued eloquence is wearisome.
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Which is the more believable of the two, Moses or China?
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We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.
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There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.
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Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.
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Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.
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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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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.
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Continuous eloquence wearies.
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What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial.
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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.
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There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
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All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
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[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.
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Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
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Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.
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Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.
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The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.
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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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Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.