"Human life is thus only an endless..." - Quote by Blaise Pascal
Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
More by Blaise Pascal
“Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.”
“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
“Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.”
More on Society
“Schools have not necessarily much to do with education...they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.”
“Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!”
“When people are educated, the distinction between classes disappears.”
More on Illusion
“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
“A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.”
“truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors that have become worn-out and deprived of their sensuous force, coins that have lost their imprint and are now no longer seen as coins but as metal.”