Blaise Pascal: Trending quotes (page 2)

“I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.”

“You always admire what you really don't understand.”

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.”

“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

“To understand is to forgive.”

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

“It is better to know something about everything then everything about something”

“Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.”

“We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.”

“The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.”

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

“What would you say of that man who was made king by the error of the people, if he had so far forgotten his natural condition as to imagine that this kingdom was due to him, that he deserved it, and that it belonged to him of right? You would marvel at his stupidity and folly.”

“It is not certain that everything is uncertain.”

“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

“There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices.”

“Rules for Definitions. I. Not to undertake to define any of the things so well known of themselves that the clearer terms cannot be had to explain them. II. Not to leave any terms that are at all obscure or ambiguous without definition. III. Not to employ in the definition of terms any words but such as are perfectly known or already explained.”

“There are some men who expose themselves to damnation so foolishly by avarice, by brutality, by debauches, by violence, by excesses, by blasphemies! …it is always a great folly for a man to expose himself to damnation… He must despise desire and its kingdom, and aspire to that kingdom of love in which all the subjects breathe nothing but love, and desire nothing but the benefits of love.”

“The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!”