Blaise Pascal Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things. Pensées

2. Ciascuno esamini i propri pensieri: li troverà sempre occupati dal passato e dall'avvenire. Non pensiamo quasi mai al presente, o se ci pensiamo, è solo per prenderne lume al fine di predisporre l'avvenire. Il presente non è mai il nostro fine: il passato o il presente sono i nostri mezzi; solo l'avvenire è il nostro fine. Così non viviamo mai, ma speriamo di vivere, e, preparandoci sempre ad essere felici, è inevitabile che non siamo mai tali.

3. He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright

4. I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."(Letter 16, 1657) The Provincial Letters

5. I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter. The Provincial Letters

6. If our state were really happy, we should not need to take our minds off it in order to make ourselves happy. Pensées

7. It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.

8. The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.

9. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart. Pensées

10. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart. Pensées

11. Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

12. And if one loves me for my judgement, memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this Ego, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul? And how love the body or the soul, except for these qualities which do not constitute me, since they are perishable? For it is impossible and would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract and whatever qualities might be therein. We never, then, love a person, but only qualities. Let us, then, jeer no more at those who are honoured on account of rank and office; for we love a person only on account of borrowed qualities. Pensées

13. As we cannot be universal by knowing everything there is to be known about everything, we must know a little about everything, because it is much better to know something about everything than everything about something. Pensées

14. Cea mai puternică sursă de erori este războiul între simțuri și rațiune. Pensées

15. It is only by examining a book that we can ascertain what words it contains. The Provincial Letters

16. It was to equally little purpose that you obtained against Galileo a decree from Rome condemning his opinion respecting the motion of the earth. It will never be proved by such an argument as this that the earth remains stationary; and if it can be demonstrated by sure observation that it is the earth and not the sun that revolves, the efforts and arguments of all mankind put together will not hinder our planet from revolving, nor hinder themselves from revolving along with her. The Provincial Letters

17. Knowledge has two extremes which meet; one is the pure natural ignorance of every man at birth, the other is the extreme reached by great minds who run through the whole range of human knowledge, only to find that they know nothing and come back to the same ignorance from which they set out, but it is a wise ignorance which knows itself. Those who stand half-way have put their natural ignorance behind them without yet attaining the other; they have some smattering of adequate knowledge and pretend to understand everything. They upset the world and get everything wrong. Pensées

18. Let us then realize our limitations. We are something and we are not everything. Such being as we have conceals from us the knowledge of first principles, which arise from nothingness, and the smallness of our being hides infinity from our sight. Pensées

19. Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.

20. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

21. One must know oneself. Even if that does not help in finding truth, at least it helps in running one's life, and nothing is more proper. Pensées

22. Since we cannot know all there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

23. The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first. Pensées

24. The world is a good judge of things, for it is in natural ignorance, which is man's true state. The sciences have two extremes which meet. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same ignorance from which they set out; but this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself. Those between the two, who have departed from natural ignorance and not been able to reach the other, have some smattering of this vain knowledge and pretend to be wise. These trouble the world and are bad judges of everything. The people and the wise constitute the world; these despise it, and are despised. They judge badly of everything, and the world judges rightly of them. Pensées

25. To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. Pensées

26. To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

27. We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching. Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. Pensées

28. When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after--as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day--the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there, now rather than then. Pensées

29. When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

30. Δύο υπερβολές : ν' αποκλείουμε το Λόγο, και να μη δεχόμαστε παρά μόνο το Λόγο. Pensées