Blaise Pascal Quotations | Page 2

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

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?

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Man is but a reed, the most weak in nature, but he is a thinking reed

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

Nature diversifies and imitates; art imitates and diversifies.

Le coeur a ses raisons dont le cerveau ne sait nul. T: 'The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing.'

Love has its reasons that Reason knows not

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe they are sinners, the sinners who believe they are righteous.

Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives

We know the truth, not only be the reason, but also be the heart.

Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself. [Fr., Voulez-vous qu'on croie du bien de vous? N'en dites point.]

We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.

To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction.

From whence comes it that a cripple in body does not irritate us, and that a crippled mind enrages us? It is because a cripple sees that we go right, and a distorted mind says that it is we who go astray. But for that we should have more pity and less rage.

Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.

It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

I take it as a matter not to be disputed, that if all knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. This seems proved by the quarrels and disputes caused by the disclosures which are occasionally made.

The sweetness of glory is so great that, join it to what we will, even to death, we love it.

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.

That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.

There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; qualities that are in excess are so much at variance with our feelings that they are impalpable: we do not feel them, though we suffer from their effects.

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.

All men naturally hate one another. I hold it a fact, that if men knew exactly what one says of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.

When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant.

Mediocrity makes the most of its native possessions.

There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.

True eloquence scorns eloquence.

There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.

That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth. [Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]

To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. [Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]

To scorn philosophy is truly to philosophize.

When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is a restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.

Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them.

The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.

We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.

Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of man.

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.

If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would itself be venerable enough.

No animal admires another animal.

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.

The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.

Continuous eloquence is tedious.

It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.

All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.

We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.

The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.

[Christianity] endeavors equally to establish these two things: that God has set up in the Church visible signs to make himself known to those who should seek him sincerely, and that he has nevertheless so disguised them that he will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart.

Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.

Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room.

I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.

All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.

Wisdom leads us back to childhood.

Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward merit, for all will say that they are meritorious.

Voluptuousness, like justice, is blind, but that is the only resemblance between them.

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.

There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.

We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.

Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.

The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain anything from God, that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, and soon, in order that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, may be now subject to the creature.

We are so presumptuous that we should like to be known all over the world, even by people who will only come when we are no more. Such is our vanity that the good opinion of half a dozen of the people around us gives us pleasure and satisfaction.

Brave deeds are wasted when hidden.

However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.

Vanity is but the surface.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.

We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.

We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.

In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.

Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?

If god does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.

Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true and then show that it is.

Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he destroyed himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, in which he saved himself and the whole human race.

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.

If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.

Faith is a gift of God.

What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.