A Quote by Blaise Pascal

Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched; but it is being great to know that one is wretched.

Blaise Pascal

Quote Topics

Being Does Great Greatness Himself Itself Know Knows Man Oneself Then Tree Wretched

Quote Author

Blaise Pascal
French - Philosopher
June 19, 1623 - August 19, 1662

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Blaise Pascal

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.

Blaise Pascal

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Marcus Tullius Cicero

A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man.

Victor Hugo

A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.

Khaled Hosseini

If a lover is wretched who invokes kisses of which he knows not the flavor, a thousand times more wretched is he who has had a taste of the flavor and then had it denied him.

Italo Calvino

The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labor at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world-loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.

Seneca the Younger

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.

Blaise Pascal

I know myself a Man-- Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.

Sir John Davies

Friendship's the privilege of private men; for wretched greatness knows no blessing so substantial.

Nahum Tate

But if you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched up-bringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself.

C. S. Lewis

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

Victor Hugo

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Francis Bacon

You will know that wretched men are the cause of their own suffering, who neither see nor hear the good that is near them, and few are the ones who know how to secure release from their troubles.