"I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess."
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Quote collection
Blaise Pascal quotes (page 30 of 37)
727 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Le nez de Cle opa" tre: s'il e u" t e te plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait change . Cleopatra'snose: if it had beenshorter the whole face of the earth would have been different."
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"If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason."
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"When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing."
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"The married should not forget that to speak of love begets love."
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"I know whom I have believed."
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"When we see an effect happen always in the same manner, we infer that it takes place by a natural necessity; as, for instance, that the sun will rise to morrow; but nature often deceives us, and will not submit to its own rules."
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"Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood."
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"All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth."
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"La chose la plus importante a' toute la vie est le choix du me tier: le hasard en dispose. The most important thing in life is to choose a profession: chance arranges for that."
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"Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity."
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"Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just."
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"I have spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences; but the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such subjects disgusted me with them. When I began to study man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to him, and that in diving into them, I wandered farther from my real object than those who knew them not, and I forgave them for not having attended to these things. I expected then, however, that I should find some companions in the study of man, since it was so specifically a duty. I was in error. There are fewer students of man than of geometry."
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"We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?"
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"If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?"
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"Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good."
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"Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere."
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"To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. [Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]"
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"The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first."
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"Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!"
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