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

More quotes by Blaise Pascal

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The war existing between the senses and reason.
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Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
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On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at Court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room.
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Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.
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If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.
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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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Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
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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.
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The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.
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There is a lot of difference between tempting and leading into error. God tempts but does not lead into error. To tempt is to provide opportunities for us to do certain things if we do not love God, but putting us under no necessity to do so. To lead into error is to compel a man necessarily to conclude and follow a falsehood.
Blaise Pascal
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We are only troubled by the fears which we, and not nature, give ourselves, for they add to the state in which we are the passions of the state in which we are not.
Blaise Pascal
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If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God
Blaise Pascal
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Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.
Blaise Pascal
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How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all.
Blaise Pascal
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Our true dignity consists — in thought. Thence we must derive our elevation, not from space or duration. Let us endeavor then to think well this is the principle of morals.
Blaise Pascal
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Force rules the world-not opinion but it is opinion that makes use of force.
Blaise Pascal
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The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions.
Blaise Pascal
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No soul of high estate can take pleasure in slander. It betrays a weakness.
Blaise Pascal
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Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
Blaise Pascal
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The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things it is feeble if it cannot realize that.
Blaise Pascal