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Blaise Pascal Quotes - Page 12

All Quotes Achievement Age Anxiety Appreciation Art Atheism Atheist Authority Beauty Belief Blindness Boredom Certainty Change Character Charity Christ Confusion Curiosity Darkness Death Deception Desire Dignity Doubt Duty Dying Earth Effort Eternity Evil Faith Feelings Giving Glory God Good Deeds Grace Greatness Happiness Hate Heart Heaven History Humanity Humility Hypocrisy Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Intelligence Intuition Jesus Joy Judging Justice Killing Kindness Knowing God Knowledge Life Logic Loss Love Lying Madness Mankind Math Mathematics Mediocrity Moderation Morality Nature Originality Pain Painting Passion Past Peace Perception Philosophy Pleasure Power Pride Progress Purpose Quality Reading Reality Religion Reputation Running Sadness Science Shame Silence Sin Sleep Solitude Soul Spring Struggle Study Style Suffering Time Truth Tyranny Understanding Unity Universe Vision War Water Weakness Winning Wisdom Writing

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.

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.

Doubt, Unfair, Duty

Blaise Pascal, Auguste Molinier (1905). “The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal”

True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of morality.

Light, Morality, Eloquence

Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works”, p.10, Cosimo, Inc.

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

Humility, Pride, Math

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

Running, Abyss, Seeing

Blaise Pascal (2008). “Human Happiness”, Penguin Group USA

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. . . .

Heart, Light, Proof

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

Love, Wedding, Men

If a soldier or labourer complain of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.

Soldier, Complaining, Hardship

Blaise Pascal (2016). “Pensées”, p.62, Open Road Media

Why God has instituted Prayer:— To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.

Prayer, Causality, Dignity

"The Thoughts on religion, and evidences of Christianity, of Pascal; tr., with intr., notes, etc., by G. Pearce".

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.

Believe, Men, Fool

Blaise Pascal (1966). “Pascal Pensées”, Penguin Classics

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

Pain, Vanity, Strange

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

Nature, Men, Two

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

Writing, Style, Natural

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

Talking, Judging, Ordinary

Blaise Pascal (1966). “Pascal Pensées”, Penguin Classics

It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

Gratitude, Love Is, Allies

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.]

Believe, Miracle, May

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

Christian, Heart, Veils

Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we love can them. The saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.

Order, Saint, Charity

"The Art of Persuasion". Book by Blaise Pascal, translated by O. W. Wright, www.bartleby.com. 2001.

Nature confuses the skeptics and reason confutes the dogmatists

Nature, Reason, Skeptic

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.

Men, Diversity, Principles

Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.409, Cosimo, Inc.

Faith affirms many things, respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing that they deny. It is superior, but never opposed to their testimony

Faith, Silent, Deny

Richard Watson, Thomas Taylor, Thomas Raffles, Francis Augustus Cox, Andrew Fuller (1826). “The Christian library: A reprint of popular religious works”, p.539

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.

Death, Loss, Men

Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.59, Simon and Schuster

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

Clever, Men, Imagination

Blaise Pascal (1966). “Pascal Pensées”, Penguin Classics

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Inspiring, Nature, Men

Blaise Pascal (2016). “Pensées”, p.135, Open Road Media

Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

Men

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.

Believe, Simple, Water

"Pensées". Book by Blaise Pascal, Section III: On the Necessity of the Wager (184-241), 1669.

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