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The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.
Blaise Pascal -
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
Blaise Pascal
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If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
Blaise Pascal -
Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject.
Blaise Pascal -
God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?
Blaise Pascal -
The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
Blaise Pascal
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Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal -
The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live.
Blaise Pascal -
Faith is a gift of God.
Blaise Pascal -
Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.
Blaise Pascal -
One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.
Blaise Pascal
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The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.
Blaise Pascal -
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.
Blaise Pascal -
The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.
Blaise Pascal -
We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.
Blaise Pascal -
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Blaise Pascal -
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.
Blaise Pascal
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Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.
Blaise Pascal -
We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.
Blaise Pascal -
Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss.
Blaise Pascal -
Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we love can them. The saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.
Blaise Pascal