Blaise Pascal: Trending quotes (page 7)

“As to the objection that these rules are common in the world”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion
Context: As to the objection that these rules are common in the world, that it is necessary to define every thing and to prove every thing, and that logicians themselves have placed them among their art, I would that the thing were true and that it were so well known... But so little is this the case, that, geometricians alone excepted, who are so few in number that they are a single in a whole nation and long periods of time, we see no others that know it.

World

“The method of not erring is sought by all the world.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion
Context: The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.

World

“God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

God , Light

“Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.

“For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart as equal with all men... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring to discover to you.

Forgetting

“We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion
Context: It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.

“One of the principal reasons that diverts those who are entering upon this knowledge so much from the true path which they should follow, is the fancy that they take at the outset that good things are inaccessible, giving them the name great, lofty, elevated, sublime. This destroys everything. I would call them low, common, familiar”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion
Context: One of the principal reasons that diverts those who are entering upon this knowledge so much from the true path which they should follow, is the fancy that they take at the outset that good things are inaccessible, giving them the name great, lofty, elevated, sublime. This destroys everything. I would call them low, common, familiar: these names suit it better; I hate such inflated expressions.

Knowledge

“These two states which it is necessary to know together in order to see the whole truth, being known separately, lead necessarily to one of these two vices, pride or indolence”

Blaise Pascal

Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne
Context: These two states which it is necessary to know together in order to see the whole truth, being known separately, lead necessarily to one of these two vices, pride or indolence, in which all men are invariably led before grace, since if they do not remain in their disorders through laxity, they forsake them through vanity, so true is that which you have just repeated to me from St. Augustine, and which I find to a great extent; for in fact homage is rendered to them in many ways.

Truth

“All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart as equal with all men... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring to discover to you.

Men

“If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize, by a more secret but truer thought, that you have nothing naturally superior to them.

Men

“The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from another than from himself at different times.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

Pleasure

“Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love 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

The Art of Persuasion
Context: Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love 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.

Love , Truth

“All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner”

Blaise Pascal

Montaigne, Essais, liv. III, chap. viii.—Faugère
The Art of Persuasion
Context: All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation http://books.google.com/books?id=iRBEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA452& pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make.... let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds... it will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.

“Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the state of boatman or that of duke; and there is no natural bond that attaches them to one condition rather than to another.”

Blaise Pascal

Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Context: This right which you have, is not founded any more than his upon any quality or any merit in yourself which renders you worthy of it. Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the state of boatman or that of duke; and there is no natural bond that attaches them to one condition rather than to another.

Soul , Nature , Indifference

“They [men] have corrupted this [God's supernatural] order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.”

Blaise Pascal

The Art of Persuasion

Men , God

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much”

Blaise Pascal

Variant: Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.