Blaise Pascal Quotes

“Notre nature est dans le mouvement; le repos entier est la mort. Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.”

“We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.”

“The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”

“Vanity is but the surface.”

“A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.”

“Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.”

“Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy,such as solar- and wind-derived electricity,. envisioned an age of "universal education and sustenance of all humanity"."The heart has reasons that reason does not understand."”

“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”

“If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.”

“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.”

“All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.”

“The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.”

“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 fromanother than from himself at different times.”

“For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those mostremote from it?”

“La chose la plus importante a' toute la vie est le choix du me tier: le hasard en dispose. The most important thing in life is to choose a profession: chance arranges for that.”

“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.”

“We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?”

“I can readily conceive of a man without hands or feet; and I could conceive of him without a head, if experience had not taught me that by this he thinks, Thought then, is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him.”

“Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.”

“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.”

“Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.”

“Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and finds fault with him who escapes it at whichever end... To leave the mean is to abandon humanity.”

“You always admire what you really don't understand.”

“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.”

“There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.”