Blaise Pascal Quotes

All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.

Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things beyond it.

If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.

Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.

When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there.

Let each of us examine his thoughts

We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem.

The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.

Le nez de Cle opa" tre: s'il e u" t e te plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait change . Cleopatra'snose: if it had beenshorter the whole face of the earth would have been different.

The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.

I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.

When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from Him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil, yet it is innate.

Nature confuses the skeptics and reason confutes the dogmatists

Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!

It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. [Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]

La chose la plus importante a' toute la vie est le choix du me tier: le hasard en dispose. The most important thing in life is to choose a profession: chance arranges for that.

Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.

We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?

The married should not forget that to speak of love begets love.

I know whom I have believed.

Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.

Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.

It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.

The God of the infinite is the God of the infinitesimal.

It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.

The truth about nature we discover with our brains. The truth about religion we discover with our hearts.

Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.

We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.

...for the truth is always older than all the opinions men have held regarding it; and one should be ignoring the nature of truth if we imagined that the truth began at the time it came to be known.

Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same.

Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.

The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses force.

All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.

Philosophers.-We are full of things which take us out of ourselves.

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.

Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.

It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.

If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest.

Custom determines what is agreeable.

Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.

All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.

Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling.

Who knows if this other half of life where we think we're awake is not another sleep a little different from the first.