Blaise Pascal Quotes

In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.

When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.

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.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.

[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.

Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.

How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all.

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.

No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth

Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name!

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

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

When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there … now instead of then.

(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

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

By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

An advocate who has been well paid in advance will find the cause he is pleading all the more just.

Our natures lie in motion, without which we die.

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

All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

Without the knowledge of our wretchedness, the knowledge of God creates pride. With it, the knowledge of God creates despair. The knowledge of Christ offers a third way, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

You corrupt religion either in favour of your friends, or against your enemies.

Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own feelings--their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of his baseness.

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.

The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

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.

Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.

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

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

It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.

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.

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

You gave me health that I might serve you; and so often I failed to use my good health in your service. Now you send me sickness in order to correct me Grant that, having ignored the things of spirit when my body was vigorous, I may now enjoy spiritual sweetness while my body groans with pain.

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.

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!

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.