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Blaise Pascal quotes

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“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?” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“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...” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Justice without might is helpless; might without justice is tyrannical.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Nothing gives certainty but truth; nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“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, Pensées
“it is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The last proceeding of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Evil is easy, and has infinite forms; good is almost unique.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them, and to be unwilling to recognise them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The heart has its own order; the intellect has its own, which is by principle and demonstration. The heart has another. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by enumerating in order the causes of love; that would be ridiculous.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Those honour Nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything, even on theology.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The property of power is to protect.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“This je ne sais quoi, so small an object that we cannot recognise it, agitates a whole country, princes, armies, the entire world. Cleopatra's nose: had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“How difficult it is to submit anything to the judgment of another, without prejudicing his judgment by the manner in which we submit it!” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. . . . If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The charm of fame is so great, that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“the chief malady of man is restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Lust and force are the source of all our actions; lust causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“if all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

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truth nature rest reason contradiction religion force evil knowledge heart justice man vanity love happiness power beauty death virtue meaning

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Pensées (66)