Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)
French mathematician, logician, physicist and theologian.
Sinners lick the dust, that is to say, love earthly pleasures. 665
Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.
You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefore properly the king of desire. ...equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.
If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.
"I would soon have renounced pleasure," say they, "had I faith." For my part I tell you, "You would soon have faith, if you renounced pleasure." Now, it is for you to begin. If I could, I would give you faith. I cannot do so, nor therefore test the truth of what you say. But you can well renounce pleasure, and test whether what I say is true. 240
When I commenced the study of man... I thought at least to find many companions in the study of man, and that it was the true study which is suited to him. I have been deceived; still fewer study it than geometry. It is only from the want of knowing how to study this that we seek the other studies. But is it not that even here is not the knowledge which man should have, and that for the purpose of happiness it is better for him not to know himself? 144
Art thou less a slave by being loved and favoured by thy master? Thou art indeed well off, slave. Thy master favours thee; he will soon beat thee. 209
When we would pursue virtues to their extremes on either side, vices present themselves insensibly there, in their insensible journeys towards the infinitely little; and vices present themselves in a crowd towards the infinitely great, so that we lose ourselves in them, and no longer see virtues. 357
Every one can call himself a prophet. But I see the Christian religion wherein prophecies are fulfilled; and that is what every one cannot do. 692
When I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard the whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself, and, as it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death, and incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified, like a man who should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island, and should awaken without knowing where he is, and without means of escape. And thereupon I wonder how people in a condition so wretched do not fall into despair. 692
This sect derives more strength from its enemies than from its friends; for the weakness of man is far more evident in those who know it not than in those who know it. 376
One man will say a thing of himself without comprehending its excellence, in which another will discern a marvelous series of conclusions, which makes us affirm that it is no longer the same expression, and that he is no more indebted for it to the one from whom he has learned it, than a beautiful tree belongs to the one who cast the seed, without thinking of it, or knowing it, into the fruitful soil which caused its growth by its own fertility.
The clearness in divine things requires us to revere the obscurities in them. 649
The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God. 84
Those great spiritual efforts, which the soul sometimes assays, are things on which it does not lay hold. It only leaps to [toward] them, not as upon a throne, for ever, but merely for an instant. 351
When the word of God, which is really true, is false literally, it is true spiritually. 686
Nature gives us... passions and desires suitable to our present state. We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves... 109
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men. 7
But God, not having desired to reveal these things to this people who were unworthy of them, and having nevertheless desired to foretell them, in order that they might be believed, foretold the time clearly, and expressed the things sometimes clearly, but very often in figures, in order that those who loved symbols might consider them, and those who loved what was symbolized might see it therein. 669