Blaise Pascal Quotes
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When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.
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The only shame is to have none.
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If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?
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Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.
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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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Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.
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Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.
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Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
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The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.
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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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The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
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Le silence est la plus grande perse cution: jamais les saints ne se sont tus. Silence is the greatest of all persecutions: no saint was ever silent.
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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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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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Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.
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We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.
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There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.
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The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
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To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
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How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?
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When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
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Great and small suffer the same mishaps.
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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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Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.