"When I see the blind and wretched..." - Quote by Blaise Pascal
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.
More by Blaise Pascal
“We are never in search of things, but always in search of the search.”
“You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.”
“The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.”
More on Human Condition
More on Existence
“You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.”
“A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.”
“Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.”