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Blaise Pascal Quotes - Page 15

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

He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.

He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.

Sea, Rivers, Doe

Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth, he shuns saying it to others; and all these moods, so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart.

Heart, Men, Roots

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.

God, Believe, Four

How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?

Jesus, Hate, Believe

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.

Mind, Progress, Want

Blaise Pascal (1849). “Thoughts of Blaise Pascal”, p.153

Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.

Jesus, Christ, Knowing God

A jester, a bad character.

Character, Jester, Bad Character

"Pensées". Art, VI. 22, 1669.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

Struggle, Best Effort, Victory

Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pensées”, p.38, Courier Corporation

Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

Truth, Distance, Light

All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theater. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love.

Love, Christian, Passion

Blaise Pascal (1959). “Pascal's Pensées: Selections”, p.18, Prabhat Prakashan

The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice.

Art, Order, Justice

Blaise Pascal, Henry Rogers, Victor Cousin, Charles Louandre (1859). “The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal”, p.184

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.

Happiness, Men, Trying

Pensees no. 181 (1658). Popularly paraphrased as "There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart."

Too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the wherewithal to overpay our debts.

Wish, Debt, Benefits

Blaise Pascal (2016). “Pensées”, p.40, Open Road Media

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.

Fall, Greatness, Space

You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.

Death, Spiritual, Atheist

Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.

Thinking, Reflection, Imagination

Blaise Pascal (1829). “Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects”, p.76

Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.

Men, Miserable, Grandeur

We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.

Evil, Principles, Conscience

"Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 157, 1895.

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

Men, Knows

Blaise Pascal (2015). “Pensees: Thoughts on Religion”, p.166, Letcetera Publishing

All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Men, Solitude, Facts

Blaise Pascal, W. F. Trotter, T. S. Eliot (2003). “Pensees”, p.39, Courier Corporation

The law required what it could not give. Grace gives that which it requires.

Law, Giving, Grace

Do they think that they have given us great pleasure by telling us that they hold our soul to be no more than wind or smoke, and saying it moreover in tones of pride and satisfaction? Is this then something to be said gaily? Is it not on the contrary something to be said sadly, as being the saddest thing in the world?

Pride, Thinking, Wind

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

To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!

Christian, Believe, Loss

That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.

Queens, Real, Character

Blaise Pascal (1849). “Thoughts of Blaise Pascal”, p.95

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.

Loneliness, Passion, Men

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