Blaise Pascal Quotes

Όταν λέμε την αλήθεια, ωφελούμε κείνους που τη μαθαίνουν, μα ζημιώνουμε τον εαυτό μας, γιατί θα μας μισήσουν

The parts of the universe . . . all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.

The end of this discourse. — Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognise that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing.
”Ah! This discourse transports me, charms me,” etc.
If this discourse pleases you and seems impressive, know that it is made by a man who has knelt, both before and after it, in prayer to that Being, infinite and without parts, before whom he lays all he has, for you also to lay before Him all you have for your own good and for His glory, that so strength may be given to lowliness.

Christ prefigured by Joseph. Innocent, beloved of his father, sent by his father to see his brothers, is sold for twenty pieces of silver by his brothers. Through this he becomes their lord, their saviour, saviour of strangers and saviour of the world. None of this would have happened but for their plot to destroy him, the sale and their rejection of him. In prison, Joseph innocent between two criminals. Jesus on the cross between two thieves. He prophesies the salvation of one and the death of the other when to all appearance they are alike. Christ saves the elect and damns the reprobate for the same crime. Joseph only prophesies, Jesus acts. Joseph asks the man who will be saved to remember him when he comes in glory. And the man Jesus saves asks to be remembered when he comes into his kingdom.

La puissance des rois est fondée sur la raison et sur la folie du peuple, et bien plus sur la folie.

Wisdom is a return to childhood.

I do not speak here of divine truths... because they are infinitely superior to nature: God alone can place them in the soul... I know that he has desired that they should enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into the heart, to humiliate that proud power of reasoning that pretends to the right to be the judge of the things that the will chooses; and to cure this infirm will which is wholly corrupted by its filthy attachments.

يود الإنسان أن يكون عظيما و يري أنه صغير, و يود أن يكون سعيدا و يري أنه شقي, و يود أن يكون موضع الحب و التقدير من الناس,و يري أن أخطاءه لا تجلب سوي كراهيتهم و احتقارهم.
إن الحرج الذي يقع فيه نتيجة هذا التناقض يولد لديه أسوأ النزعات الإجرامية التي يمكن تخيلها, ذلك أنه يبدأ في كره الحقيقة التي تدينه و تريه عيبه

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

The only religion which is against nature, against common sense and against our pleasures is the only one which has always existed.

For it is beyond doubt that there is nothing which more shocks our reason than to say that the sin of the first man has rendered guilty those, who, being so removed from this source, seem incapable of participation in it. This transmission does not only seem to us impossible, it seems also very unjust. For what is more contrary to the rules of our miserable justice than to damn eternally an infant incapable of will, for a sin wherein he seems to have so little a share, that it was committed six thousand years before he was in existence? Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine; and yet, without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. The knot of our condition takes its twists and turns in this abyss, so that man is more inconceivable without this mystery than this mystery is inconceivable to man.

Logic has borrowed, perhaps, the rules of geometry, without comprehending their force... it does not thence follow that they have entered into the spirit of geometry, and I should be greatly averse... to placing them on a level with that science that teaches the true method of directing reason.

And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?

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.

El amor no tiene edad; siempre está naciendo.