"Custom determines what is agreeable."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Blaise Pascal quotes (page 28 of 37)
727 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves."
Read quote
3 likes
"If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest."
Read quote
3 likes
"The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries."
Read quote
3 likes
"Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things beyond it."
Read quote
3 likes
"All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch."
Read quote
3 likes
"If a soldier or labourer complain of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing."
Read quote
3 likes
"Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this."
Read quote
3 likes
"Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it."
Read quote
3 likes
"Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself."
Read quote
3 likes
"The eternal Being is forever if he is at all."
Read quote
3 likes
"It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never."
Read quote
3 likes
"Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality; that is to say, the morality of the judgment, which has no rules, makes light of the morality of the intellect.... To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."
Read quote
3 likes
"The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that."
Read quote
3 likes
"Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against vanity want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem."
Read quote
3 likes
"Let each of us examine his thoughts"
Read quote
3 likes