Blaise Pascal Quotes
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It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
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If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.
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Continuous eloquence wearies.
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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.
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Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday.
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We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.
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Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.
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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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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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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.
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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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Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the [sexual] act, but we do not draw from it the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is involuntary; although we bring it about, we do so involuntarily. It is not for the sake of the thing in itself but for another end, and is therefore not a sign of man's weakness, or his subjection to this act.
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No one is discontented at not being a king except a discrowned king ... unhappiness almost invariably indicates the existence of a road not taken, a talent undeveloped, a self not recognized.
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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.
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One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person.
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To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!
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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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If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.
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Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)
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Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.
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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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Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own place.
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Nothing is so conformable to reason as to disavow reason.
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Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.