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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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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
Present
Surroundings
Help
Tries
Happiness
Fill
Helping
Vain
True
Seeking
Doe
Remain
Trace
Trying
Mark
Obtain
Things
Empty
Absent

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Each one is all in all to himself for being dead, all is dead to him.
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I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought he would be a stone or a brute.
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To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.
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Things are always at their best in their beginning.
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Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.
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A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.
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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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To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. [Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]
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If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?
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The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.
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If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
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When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there … now instead of then.
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St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent the excitable desire is the Eve and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually criminal desire is often excited but sin is not completed till reason consents.
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We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?
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Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.
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How can anyone lose who chooses to become a Christian? If, when he dies, there turns out to be no God and his faith was in vain, he has lost nothing...If, however, there is a God and a heaven and a hell. then he has gained heaven and his skeptical friends have lost everything.
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How shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies.
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The incredulous are the more credulous. They believe the miracles of Vespasian that they may not believe those of Moses. [Fr., Incredules les plus credules. Ils croient les miracle de Vespasien, pour ne pas croire ceux de Moise.]
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All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.
Blaise Pascal
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In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
Blaise Pascal