Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Wretched
Greatness
Oneself
Tree
Doe
Great
Men

More quotes by Blaise Pascal

Image
If you gain, you gain all if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
Blaise Pascal
Image
I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.
Blaise Pascal
Image
We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.
Blaise Pascal
Image
Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.
Blaise Pascal
Image
Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.
Blaise Pascal
Image
Caesar was too old, it seems to me, to go off and amuse himself conquering the world. Such a pastime was all right for Augustus and Alexander they were young men, not easily held in check, but Caesar ought to have been more mature.
Blaise Pascal
Image
I should not be a Christian but for the miracles.
Blaise Pascal
Image
That dog is mine said those poor children that place in the sun is mine such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth. [Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]
Blaise Pascal
Image
It is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, [if we were to show them our proofs of the existence of God] nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt. . . .
Blaise Pascal
Image
Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday.
Blaise Pascal
Image
The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
Blaise Pascal
Image
Fear not, provided you fear but if you fear not, then fear.
Blaise Pascal
Image
It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us the charms of novelty have the same power.
Blaise Pascal
Image
Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own feelings--their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of his baseness.
Blaise Pascal
Image
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.
Blaise Pascal
Image
There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.
Blaise Pascal
Image
There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
Blaise Pascal
Image
All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
Blaise Pascal
Image
Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.
Blaise Pascal
Image
All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
Blaise Pascal