Blaise Pascal
Eloquence is the painting of thought.Collection: Painting
Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.Collection: Mind
Jesus was in a garden, not of delight as the first Adam, in which he destroyed himself and the whole human race, but in one of agony, in which he saved himself and the whole human race.Collection: Jesus
Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.Collection: Truth
All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.Collection: Men
The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Atheist
The secrets of nature are concealed; her agency is perpetual, but we do not always discover its effects; time reveals them from age to age; and although she is always the same in herself, she is not always equally well known.Collection: Nature
There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.Collection: Two
When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of if is generally right on this side,--and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case.Collection: Views
Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.Collection: Would Be
If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest.Collection: God
How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!Collection: Heart
If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.Collection: Love
Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.Collection: Annoyed
The sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room.Collection: Men
Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of his soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair.Collection: Passion
Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.Collection: Death
(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.Collection: Men
If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in GodCollection: Believe
It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him. Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.Collection: Believe
It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.Collection: Heart
It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.Collection: Victory
Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?Collection: Reality
All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.Collection: Knowing
What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?Collection: Truth
When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there … now instead of then.Collection: Space
L'homme n'est qu'un sujet plein d'erreur, naturelle et ineffa c° able sans la gra" ce. Man is nothing but a subject full of natural error that cannot be eradicated except through grace.Collection: Men
Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.Collection: Fall
Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.Collection: Men
We sometimes learn more from the sight of evil than from an example of good; and it is well to accustom ourselves to profit by the evil which is so common, while that which is good is so rare.Collection: Sight
Let man then contemplate nature in full and lofty majesty, and turn his eyes away from the mean objects which surround him. Let him look at the dazzling light hung aloft as an eternal lamp to lighten the universe; let him behold the earth, a mere dot compared with the vast circuit which that orb describes, and stand amazed to find that the vast circuit itself is but a very fine point compared with the orbit traced by the starts as they roll their course on high.Collection: Mean
If our condition were truly happy, we would not need diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves happy.Collection: Order
All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.Collection: Hate
Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander; they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature.Collection: Men
We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.Collection: Death
The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.Collection: Confusion
That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.Collection: Religion
What are our natural principles but principles of custom?Collection: Principles
Those who make antitheses by forcing the sense are like men who make false windows for the sake of symmetry. Their rule is not to speak justly, but to make accurate figures.Collection: Men
All sorrow has its root in man's inability to sit quiet in a room by himself.Collection: Men
The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.Collection: Unhappy
There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.Collection: Fall
The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.Collection: Weakness
If man should commence by studying himself, he would see how impossible it is to go further.Collection: Men
Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.Collection: Christian
One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person.Collection: Talking
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.Collection: Order