Blaise Pascal Quotes

page 2

144 Quotes to Inspire Timeless Reflection and Deep Insight

“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

“Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.”

“The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.”

“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.”

“In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.”

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”

“And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?”

“The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.”

“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”

“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference…”

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

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

“The manner in which,, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.”

“Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.”

“The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.”

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

“Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.”

“There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition”

“We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.”

“If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.”

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.”

“Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.”

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

“There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature… and the thing which pleases us.”

“What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.”

“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”

“The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.”

“Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.”

“The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play”

“A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.”

“Miracle does not always signify miracle.”

“Rules necessary for axioms. Not to demand in axioms any but things perfectly evident.”

“Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives.”

“A doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and… the knowledge of one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which man himself is scarcely ever conscious.”

“If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.”

“Rules necessary for definitions. Not to leave any terms at all obscure or ambiguous without definition; Not to employ in definitions any but terms perfectly known or already explained.”

“These five rules [above] form all that is necessary to render proofs convincing, immutable, and to say all, geometrical; and the eight rules together render them even more perfect.”

“Of the truths within our reach… the mind and the heart are as doors by which they are received into the soul, but… few enter by the mind, whilst they are brought in crowds by the rash caprices of the will, without the council of reason.”

“Five [of the above] rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error.”

“The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.”

“These eight rules [above] contain all the precepts for solid and immutable proofs.”

“Thus he had a double thought: the one by which he acted as king, the other by which he recognized his true state, and that it was accident alone that had placed him in his present condition.”

“Rules for Axioms. I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admittied, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.”

“No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.”

“If we do not secure the foundation, we cannot secure the edifice.”

“Rules for Demonstrations. I. Not to undertake to demonstrate any thing that is so evident of itself that nothing can be given that is clearer to prove it. II. To prove all propositions at all obscure, and to employ in their proof only very evident maxims or propositions already admitted or demonstrated. III. To always mentally substitute definitions in the place of things defined, in order not to be misled by the ambiguity of terms which have been restricted by definitions.”

“You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons… full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire… You are therefore properly the king of desire. …equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth… It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.”

“As soon as the soul has been made to perceive that a thing can conduct it to that which it loves supremely, it must inevitably embrace it with joy.”