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Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched but it is being great to know that one is wretched.

Blaise Pascal

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Blaise Pascal
Age: 39 †
Born: 1623
Born: June 19
Died: 1662
Died: August 19
French Moralist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Statistician
Theologian
Writer
Clarmont-Ferrand
Pascal
Louis de Montalte
Amos Dettonville
Dettonville
Paskal Blez
Great
Men
Wretched
Greatness
Oneself
Tree
Doe

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Fashion is a tyrant from which nothing frees us. We must suit ourselves to its fantastic tastes. But being compelled to live under its foolish laws, the wise man is never the first to follow, nor the last to keep it.
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The Christian's God does not merely consist of a God who is the Author of mathematical truths and the order of the elements. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the Christians, is a God of love and consolation.
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We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
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Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.
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For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?
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If you gain, you gain all if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
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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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Faith affirms many things, respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing that they deny. It is superior, but never opposed to their testimony
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Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.
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All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.
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I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true.
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To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.
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Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.
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Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
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We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
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Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only go so far, but faith has no limits.
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All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.
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What a difficult thing it is to ask someone's advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem.
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