Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it.
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A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us.
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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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It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
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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.
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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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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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The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
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There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.
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Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
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The Church limits her sacramental services to the faithful. Christ gave Himself upon the cross a ransom for all.
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Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.
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The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
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If we do not secure the foundation, we cannot secure the edifice.
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Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.
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Which is the more believable of the two, Moses or China?
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Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.
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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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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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Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.
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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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Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday.
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Continuous eloquence wearies.
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I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.