Blaise Pascal Quotes
-
Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
-
Le silence e ternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Generally we are occupied either with the miseries which now we feel, or with those which threaten; and even when we see ourselves sufficiently secure from the approach of either, still fretfulness, though unwarranted by either present or expected affliction, fails not to spring up from the deep recesses of the heart, where its roots naturally grow, and to fill the soul with its poison.
-
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.
-
When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of if is generally right on this side,--and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case.
-
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.
-
Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it.
-
All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.
-
Continuous eloquence wearies.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.
-
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.
-
The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
-
There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
-
If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.
-
What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial.
-
What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.
-
Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.
-
Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances.
-
Most of man's trouble comes from his inability to be still.
-
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.