Blaise Pascal

Quotes

1. Man is only a subject full of error, natural and ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth. Everything deceives him. These two sources of truth, reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in sincerity, deceive each other in turn. The senses mislead the reason with false appearances, and receive from reason in their turn the same trickery which they apply to her; reason has her revenge. The passions of the soul trouble the senses, and make false impressions upon them. They rival each other in falsehood and deception.

2. 

   The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

3. 

   Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

4. 

   Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.

5. 

   It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

6. 

   The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet. — Mahomet was not foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold.

   Mahomet slew; Jesus Christ caused His own to be slain.

   Mahomet forbade reading; the Apostles ordered reading.

   In fact the two are so opposed, that if Mahomet took the way to succeed from a worldly point of view, Jesus Christ, from the same point of view, took the way to perish. And instead of concluding that, since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ might well have succeeded, we ought to say that since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ should have failed.

7. 

   Condition of man: inconstancy, weariness, unrest.

8. 

   When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man. Whereas those who have good taste, and who seeing a book expect to find a man, are quite surprised to find an author. Plus poetice quam humane locutus es. "You have spoken more poetically than humanly."

9. 

   The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.

10. 

    The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

11. 

    All our reasoning boils down to yielding to sentiment.

12. 

    Who knows if this other half of life where we think we're awake is not another sleep a little different from the first.