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It is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, [if we were to show them our proofs of the existence of God] nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt. . . .
Blaise Pascal -
There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.
Blaise Pascal
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The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.
Blaise Pascal -
Rules necessary for demonstrations. To prove all propositions, and to employ nothing for their proof but axioms fully evident of themselves, or propositions already demonstrated or admitted; Never to take advantage of the ambiguity of terms by failing mentally to substitute definitions that restrict or explain them.
Blaise Pascal -
Nature has some perfections to show that she is the image of God, and some defects to show that she is only His image.
Blaise Pascal -
Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.
Blaise Pascal -
Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal
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Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.
Blaise Pascal -
The only shame is to have none.
Blaise Pascal -
La dernie' re chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la premie' re. The last thing one discovers in composing a work iswhat to put first.
Blaise Pascal -
To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. [Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]
Blaise Pascal
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Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.
Blaise Pascal -
To scorn philosophy is truly to philosophize.
Blaise Pascal -
Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.
Blaise Pascal -
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.
Blaise Pascal
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The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
Blaise Pascal -
Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.
Blaise Pascal -
To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Blaise Pascal -
The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.
Blaise Pascal