Blaise Pascal Quotes
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All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
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Man governs himself more by impulse than reason
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Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.
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Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.
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What a vast difference there is between knowing God and loving Him.
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Evil is easily discovered; there is an infinite variety; good is almost unique. But some kinds of evil are almost as difficult to discover as that which we call good; and often particular evil of this class passes for good. It needs even a certain greatness of soul to attain to this, as to that which is good.
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Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.
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Vanity is but the surface.
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Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.
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Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.
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If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. [So] you must wager. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.
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There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.
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It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.
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To understand is to forgive.
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Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go. [Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.]
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Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
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Dans une grande a" me tout est grand. In a great soul everything isgreat.
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We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.
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Opinion is the queen of the world.
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We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.
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All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.
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Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
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One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.
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We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.
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The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
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The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd.
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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.
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Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.
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St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.
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The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.
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