Blaise Pascal Quotes
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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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The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.
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There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.
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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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It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
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People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.
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Le silence e ternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
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If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize, by a more secret but truer thought, that you have nothing naturally superior to them.
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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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Of the truths within our reach... the mind and the heart are as doors by which they are received into the soul, but... few enter by the mind, whilst they are brought in crowds by the rash caprices of the will, without the council of reason.
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Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.
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Continued eloquence is wearisome.
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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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Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.
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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?
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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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The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.
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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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Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances.
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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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Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
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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.
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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.