Top 748 Quotes & Sayings by Blaise Pascal - Page 6

Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.

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.

[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.

Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it

When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.

We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness--the eighth beatitude.

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.

There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.

Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.

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.

If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.

It is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, [if we were to show them our proofs of the existence of God] nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt. . . .

Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere

All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.

What amazes me most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness.

Man is neither angel nor beast.

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and naturally loves itself; and it gives itself to one or the other, and hardens itself against one or the other, as it chooses...it is the heart that feels God, not the reason; this is faith.

He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.

Il n'y a que deux sortes d'hommes: les uns justes, qui se croient pe cheurs; les autres pe cheurs, qui se croient justes. There are only two types of people: the virtuous who believe themselves to be sinners and the sinners who believe themselves to be virtuous.

How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!

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.

The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.

Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.

Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering.

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

Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.

St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.

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

If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.

I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.

Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person.

What reason have atheists for saying that we cannot rise again? That what has never been, should be, or that what has been, should be again? Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it.

Curiosity is nothing more than vanity. More often than not we only seek knowledge to show it off.

We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.

To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.

Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of man.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.

Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.

Il est non seulement impossible, mais inutile de conna|"tre Dieu sans Je sus-Christ. It is not only impossible, but also useless to recognize God without Jesus.

We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.

There is no arena in which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation.

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.

It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it isnecessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented.

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

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.

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

Either God exists or He doesn't. Either I believe in God or I don't. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibility, I believe in God.

It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.

Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss.

To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.

God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind.

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.

Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. [So] you must wager. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.

The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness--by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.

Those who are clever in imagination are far more pleased with themselves than prudent men could reasonably be.