Blaise Pascal Quotes

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.

Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything...

Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.

An advocate who has been well paid in advance will find the cause he is pleading all the more just.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.

To understand is to forgive.

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

Console-toi, tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne m'avais trouve . Comfort yourself.You would not seek me if you had not found me.

The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.

When we see an effect happen always in the same manner, we infer that it takes place by a natural necessity; as, for instance, that the sun will rise to morrow; but nature often deceives us, and will not submit to its own rules.

I take it as a matter not to be disputed, that if all knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. This seems proved by the quarrels and disputes caused by the disclosures which are occasionally made.

On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at Court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room.

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?

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?

The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd.

Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other. But this is not natural. Each keeps its own place.

E? loquence quipersuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran, non en roi. Eloquence should persuade gently, not by force or like a tyrant or king.

Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind.

Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.

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

All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

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

To scorn philosophy is truly to philosophize.

The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.

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

All our dignity lies in our thoughts.

Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.

Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.

Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

Il y a deux sortes d'esprits, l'un ge ome trique, et l'autre que l'on peut appeler de finesse. Le premier a des vues lentes, dures et inflexibles; mais le dernier a une souplesse de pense e. There are two kinds of mind, one mathematical, the other what one might call the intuitive. The first takes a slow, firm, inflexible view, but the latter has flexibility of thought.

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.

Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.

Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.

Our natures lie in motion, without which we die.

Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.

Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.

When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a labourer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.

Curiosity is nothing more than vanity. More often than not we only seek knowledge to show it off.

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.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.

The married should not forget that to speak of love begets love.

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.

True eloquence scorns eloquence.

Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God.

If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it's possible, in everything.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

Admiration spoils all from infancy.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.

The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.