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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.

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
Fact
Exalted
Facts
Esteem
Cannot
Bear
Soul
Notion
Human
Bears
Humans
Places
Even
Respect
Esteemed
Men
Happiness
Despised

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Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?
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Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
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The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.
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Passion cannot be beautiful without excess one either loves too much or not enough.
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All sorrow has its root in man's inability to sit quiet in a room by himself.
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This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
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Kind words produce their own image in men's souls and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.
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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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It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom by thought I comprehend the world.
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When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there.
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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.
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All the dignity of man consists in thought. Thought is therefore by its nature a wonderful and incomparable thing. It must have strange defects to be contemptible. But it has such, so that nothing is more ridiculous. How great it is in its nature! How vile it is in its defects! But what is this thought? How foolish it is!
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If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.
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Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.
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Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.
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You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.
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Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.
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Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
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Without [diversion] we would be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.
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Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
Blaise Pascal