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What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke that he does not believe there is a God to watch over his actions, that he reckons himself the sole master of his behavior, and that he does not intend to give an account of it to anyone but himself?

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
Men
Anyone
Accounts
Christian
Master
Use
Actions
Reckons
Action
Masters
Yoke
Doe
Behavior
Intend
Give
Watches
Sole
Giving
Watch
Account
Believe
Hear
Thrown

More quotes by Blaise Pascal

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To speak freely of mathematics, I find it the highest exercise of the spirit but at the same time I know that it is so useless that I make little distinction between a man who is only a mathematician and a common artisan. Also, I call it the most beautiful profession in the world but it is only a profession.
Blaise Pascal
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There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.
Blaise Pascal
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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
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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.
Blaise Pascal
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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
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Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.
Blaise Pascal
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All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal
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The imagination disposes of everything. It creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are the whole of the world.
Blaise Pascal
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The gist is that good and evil are foreordained. What is foreordained comes necessarily to be after a prior act of divine volition...Rather, everything small and large is written and comes to be in a known and expected measure.
Blaise Pascal
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Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
Blaise Pascal
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One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.
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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Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true and then show that it is.
Blaise Pascal
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Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.
Blaise Pascal
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We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any pointand to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us.
Blaise Pascal
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Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.
Blaise Pascal
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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.
Blaise Pascal
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The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.
Blaise Pascal
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Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.
Blaise Pascal
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All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
Blaise Pascal