Quotes from Blaise Pascal

What a great advantage to be of noble birth, since it gives a man of eighteen the standing, recognition and respect that another man might not earn before he was fifty. That means winning thirty years' start with no effort.

Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

I can certainly imagine a man without hands, feet, or head, for it is only experience that teaches us that the head is more necessary than the feet. But I cannot imagine a man without thought; he would be a stone or an animal.

Descartes useless and unnecessary.

Just as we harm the understanding, we harm the feelings also.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men. 8

All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces. We must get away from it and crave excitement.

What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe!

No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God incline his heart, and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.

Porque, al fin, ¿qué es el hombre en la naturaleza? Una nada frente al infinito, un todo frente a la nada, un medio entre nada y todo. Infinitamente alejado de comprender los extremos, el fin de las cosas y su principio están para él invenciblemente ocultos en un secreto impenetrable, igualmente incapaz de ver la nada de donde ha salido y el infinito donde es absorbido.

For after all, what is man in creation? Is he not a mere cipher compared with the infinite, a whole compared to the nothing, a mean between zero & all, infinitely remote from understanding of either extreme? Who can follow these astonishing processes? The Author of these wonders understands them, but no one else can.

A good portrait can only be made by reconciling all our contradictory features, and it is not enough to follow through a series of mutually compatible qualities without reconciling their opposites; to understand an author's meaning all contradictory passages must be reconciled.

the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-love, which immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are seen so well represented

The will is one of the chief organs of belief, not because it creates belief, but because things are true or false according to the aspect by which we judge them. When the will likes one aspect more than another, it deflects the mind from considering the qualities of the one it does not care to see. Thus the mind, keeping in step with the will, remains looking at the aspect preferred by the will and so judges by what it sees there.

Tout notre raisonnement se réduit à céder au sentiment

How difficult it is to submit anything to the judgment of another, without prejudicing his judgment by the manner in which we submit it!

I do not know whether God exists, but I know that I have nothing to gain from being an atheist if he does not exist, whereas I have plenty to lose if he does. Hence, this justifies my belief in God.

Truth is not an object to be possessed; it is a living thing recognized, cultivated by the mind and heart.

There is change and succession in all things.' 'You are wrong, there is …' 'Why, do you not say yourself that the sky and the birds prove God?' – 'No.' – 'Does your religion not say so?' – 'No. For though it is true in a sense for some souls whom God has enlightened in this way, yet it is untrue for the majority.

7] Letter showing the usefulness of proofs, by the Machine. Faith is different from proof. One is human and the other a gift of God. The just shall live by faith.1 This is the faith that God himself puts into our hearts, often using proof as the instrument. Faith cometh by hearing.2 But this faith is in our hearts, and makes us say not 'I know' but 'I believe'.

What then is man to do in this state of affairs? Is he to doubt everything, to doubt if he is awake, whether he is being pinched or burned? Is he to doubt whether he is doubting, to doubt whether he exists? No one can go that far, and I maintain that a perfectly genuine sceptic has never existed.

Circumcision of the heart, true fasting, true sacrifice, true temple;2 the prophets showed that all this must be spiritual. Not the flesh that perishes, but that which does not perish.3 'Ye shall be free indeed.'4 So the other freedom is just a figurative freedom. 'I am the true bread from heaven.'5

There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God, and not [human] enemies, no other good but God, and not a rich land.

The word 'enemy' is therefore ambiguous, but if he says elsewhere, as he does, that he will deliver his people from their sins,1 as do Isaiah2 and others, the ambiguity is removed, and the double meaning of enemies reduced to the single meaning of iniquities.