Blaise Pascal Quotations | Page 8

If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.

Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.

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?

A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.

Nature confuses the skeptics and reason confutes the dogmatists

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.

Continued eloquence is wearisome.

When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.

Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth, he shuns saying it to others; and all these moods, so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart.

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.

The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.

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.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.

Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes laughter, use laughter when they are together, by their resemblance.

Amusement allures and deceives us and leads us down imperceptibly in thoughtlessness to the grave

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

Necessity, that great refuge and excuse for human frailty, breaks through all law; and he is not to be accounted in fault whose crime is not the effect of choice, but force.

All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.

There would be too great darkness, if truth had not visible signs.

We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.

A jester, a bad character.

Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.

Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.

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?

The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.

The incredulous are the more credulous. They believe the miracles of Vespasian that they may not believe those of Moses. [Fr., Incredules les plus credules. Ils croient les miracle de Vespasien, pour ne pas croire ceux de Moise.]

The Church limits her sacramental services to the faithful. Christ gave Himself upon the cross a ransom for all.

If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.

There is no arena in which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation.

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

If man should commence by studying himself, he would see how impossible it is to go further.

When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of if is generally right on this side,--and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case.

Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter

If we would say that man is too insignificant to deserve communion with God, we must indeed be very great to judge of it.

If all persons knew what they said of each other there would not be four friends in the world

Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master. When we disobey the latter we are punished, when we disobey the former we are fools.

Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it

People act as though our mission were to secure the triumph of truth, whereas our sole mission is fight for it. The wish to be victorious is so natural that when it clothes itself in the desire for the triumph of truth, the two are often confused, an

Thus our first interest and our first duty is to enlighten ourselves on this subject, whereon depends all our conduct. Therefore among those who do not believe, I make a vast difference between those who strive with all their power to inform themselv

Thus we never live, but we hope to live; and always disposing ourselves to be happy, it is inevitable that we never become so.

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put him?

This religion taught to her children what men have only been able to discover by their greatest knowledge.

Kind words produce their images on men's souls.

The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing

What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything

And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only.

Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.

A mere trifle consoles us for a mere trifle distresses us.

Sleep, you say, is the image of death; for my part I say that it is rather the image of life.

If you want people to think well of you, do not speak well of yourself

The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion.

The most powerful cause of error is the war existing between the senses and reason

Force rules the world, and not opinion; but opinion is that which makes use of force

How hollow and full of ribaldry is the heart of man!