Blaise Pascal Quotes
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How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.
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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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The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.
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The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
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To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
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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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On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at Court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room.
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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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If you believe in God you are at no disadvantage in this life, and at considerable advantage in the next. If you do not believe, but find in the next that there was a next, you are most unfortunate!
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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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Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
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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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Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
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All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
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The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.
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It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it isnecessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented.
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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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Either God exists or He doesn't. Either I believe in God or I don't. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibility, I believe in God.
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I should not be a Christian but for the miracles.
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One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.
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If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
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We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.
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Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
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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.