Top 748 Quotes & Sayings by Blaise Pascal - Page 5

So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Therefore those who have known God, without knowing their wretchedness, have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves.

Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

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.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

No one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

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

Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.

One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.

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.]

For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.

If ignorance were bliss, he'd be a blister

It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.

There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.

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.

We like to be deceived.

No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

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.

There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man.

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?

Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.

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

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.

The man who knows God but does not know his own misery, becomes proud. The man who knows his own misery but does not know God, ends in despair...the knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course because in him we find both God and our own misery. Jesus Christ is therefore a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.

Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.

Great and small suffer the same mishaps.

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.

There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?

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.

The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.

Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.

How can anyone lose who chooses to become a Christian? If, when he dies, there turns out to be no God and his faith was in vain, he has lost nothing...If, however, there is a God and a heaven and a hell. then he has gained heaven and his skeptical friends have lost everything.

Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.

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.

L'homme n'est ni ange ni be" te, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la be" te. Man is neither angel nor beast.Unfortunately, he who wants to act the angel often acts the beast.

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

When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.

To understand is to forgive.

There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.

Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.

Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.

Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you.

Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.

Justice and truth are two such subtle points, that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.

Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.