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(no category)
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I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.
-Blaise Pascal
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The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
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On vanity: The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.
-Blaise Pascal
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Admiration
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Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
-Blaise Pascal
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Art
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What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.
-Blaise Pascal
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Authors & Writing
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I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
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If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
-Blaise Pascal
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The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
-Blaise Pascal
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Beauty
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Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.
-Blaise Pascal
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Belief
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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.
-Blaise Pascal
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If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.
-Blaise Pascal
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Bible, The
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The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
-Blaise Pascal
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Boredom
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Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.
-Blaise Pascal
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Choice
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The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
-Blaise Pascal
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Christianity
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Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
-Blaise Pascal
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Conflict
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We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
-Blaise Pascal
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The war existing between the senses and reason.
-Blaise Pascal
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Conscience
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Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.
-Blaise Pascal
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Contentment
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On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room. A man wealthy enough for life's needs would never leave home to go to sea or beseige some fortress if he knew how to stay at home and enjoy it...
-Blaise Pascal, Pense
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Contradiction
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Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
-Blaise Pascal
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Death
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The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever.
-Blaise Pascal, Pensees
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Deception/Lying
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We like to be deceived.
-Blaise Pascal
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Desires
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Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
-Blaise Pascal
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Discovery
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One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
-Blaise Pascal
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Effort
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The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
-Blaise Pascal
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Enthusiasm
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Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
-Blaise Pascal
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Evil
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Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
-Blaise Pascal
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I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still and quiet in a room alone.
-Blaise Pascal
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Experience
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Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
-Blaise Pascal
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Faith
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Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
-Blaise Pascal
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Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
-Blaise Pascal
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Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
-Blaise Pascal
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In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
-Blaise Pascal
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It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
-Blaise Pascal
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Fame
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The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
-Blaise Pascal
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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.
-Blaise Pascal
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Freedom
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It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
-Blaise Pascal
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God
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If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation, that He exists.
-Blaise Pascal
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-Blaise Pascal, Pensees (418) known as Pascal's Wager
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Goodness
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Ugly deeds are most estimable when hidden.
-Blaise Pascal
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Gossip
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If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.
-Blaise Pascal
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I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
-Blaise Pascal
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Habits
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Habit is the second nature which destroys the first.
-Blaise Pascal
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Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
-Blaise Pascal
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Heart
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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.
-Blaise Pascal
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Humility
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If you would have people speak well of you, then do not speak well of yourself.
-Blaise Pascal
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Ideas
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The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it.
-Blaise Pascal
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Imagination
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Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything in this world.
-Blaise Pascal
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Innovation
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The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.
-Blaise Pascal
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Kindness
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Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
-Blaise Pascal
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Law
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Law, without force, is impotent.
-Blaise Pascal
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Leadership
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The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
-Blaise Pascal
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Letters (writing)
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I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal, Lettres provinciales, letter 16, 1657
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Life
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We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.
-Blaise Pascal
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Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
-Blaise Pascal
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Listening
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We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
-Blaise Pascal
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Love
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When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
-Blaise Pascal
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Mankind, Man
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Anyone who considers himself in this way will be seized with terror and, discovering that the mass nature has given him supports itself between two abysses of infinity and nothingness, he will tremble in the face of these marvels; and I believe that as his curiosity changes to admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence then search them out with presumption.
For, finally, what is man in nature? He is nothing in comparison with the infinite, and everything in comparison with nothingness, a middle term between all and nothing. He is infinitely severed from comprehending the extremes; the end of things and their principle are for him invincibly hidden in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he arises and the infinity into which he is engulfed.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/PENSEES.HTM
-Blaise Pascal, Pens
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Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the Universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.
-Blaise Pascal, Pens
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What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy. Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error: the pride and refuse of the universe.
-Blaise Pascal, Pens
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Mediocrity
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Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
-Blaise Pascal
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Moderation
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To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.
-Blaise Pascal
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Money
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All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.
-Blaise Pascal
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Obedience
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It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.
-Blaise Pascal
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Passion
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However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.
-Blaise Pascal
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Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
-Blaise Pascal
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People
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There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.
-Blaise Pascal
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Perfection
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We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.
-Blaise Pascal
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Persuasion
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People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found out by others.
-Blaise Pascal
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Philosophy
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To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
-Blaise Pascal
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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.
-Blaise Pascal
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Pleasure
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To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.
-Blaise Pascal
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Potential
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We must learn our limits. We are all something but none of us are everything.
-Blaise Pascal
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Power
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The property of power is to protect.
-Blaise Pascal
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Reading
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The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
-Blaise Pascal
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Religion
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Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
-Blaise Pascal
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Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
-Blaise Pascal
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Rest, Leisure
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Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
-Blaise Pascal
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Our nature consist in motion; complete rest is death.
-Blaise Pascal
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Ritual, Ceremony
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It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.
-Blaise Pascal
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Rivers
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He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.
Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.
-Blaise Pascal, Pensees (VII, 38)
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Science
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Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
-Blaise Pascal
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Sin
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There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
-Blaise Pascal
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Space
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The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
-Blaise Pascal
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Speeches (oratory)
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Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
-Blaise Pascal
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Style
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When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
-Blaise Pascal
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Thought
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Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
-Blaise Pascal
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If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
-Blaise Pascal
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Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
-Blaise Pascal
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Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this.
-Blaise Pascal
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Time
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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.
-Blaise Pascal
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Truth
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Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
-Blaise Pascal
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Unity
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The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.
-Blaise Pascal
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Any unity which doesn't have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny.
-Blaise Pascal
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Vanity
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Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.
-Blaise Pascal, Penses
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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.
-Blaise Pascal
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Books by and about Blaise Pascal
