Pascal Quotes

How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all.

I should not be a Christian but for the miracles.

La dernie' re chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la premie' re. The last thing one discovers in composing a work iswhat to put first.

Our natures lie in motion, without which we die.

Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.

By thought I embrace the universe.

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

Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.

It is an appalling thing to feel all one possesses drain away.

Necessity, that great refuge and excuse for human frailty, breaks through all law; and he is not to be accounted in fault whose crime is not the effect of choice, but force.

Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible. . . . We are then incapable of knowing of either what He is or if He is. . . .

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

Everything that is incomprehensible does not, however, cease to exist.

The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.

We are never in search of things, but always in search of the search.

All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.

That which makes us go so far for love is that we never think that we might have need of anything besides that which we love.

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

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.

What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress, and which lifts us up.

When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.

Which is the more believable of the two, Moses or China?

Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.

Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire them.

The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.

We must make good people wish that the Christian faith were true, and then show that it is.

All our troubles come from not being able to be alone.

To scorn philosophy is truly to philosophize.

There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.

Our true dignity consists — in thought. Thence we must derive our elevation, not from space or duration. Let us endeavor then to think well; this is the principle of morals.

I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.

The great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man's true state.

To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.

There would be too great darkness, if truth had not visible signs.

However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.

Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them.

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

If man should commence by studying himself, he would see how impossible it is to go further.

That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.

All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true.

Le moi est ha|«s sable. The self is hateful.

Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances.

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

Je ne crois que les histoires dont les te moins se feraient e gorger. I only believe in histories told by witnesses who would have had their throats slit.

Two similar faces, neither of which alone causes laughter, use laughter when they are together, by their resemblance.