Tag: Blaise Pascal

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

Blaise Pascal

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

Blaise Pascal

If we look at our work immediately after completing it, we are still too involved; if too long afterwards, we cannot pick up the thread again.

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.

Blaise Pascal

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

Blaise Pascal

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By whose order and design have this place and time been destined for me?—

Blaise Pascal

It is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all we want.

Blaise Pascal

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”

Blaise Pascal

This reads a little like a fortune cookie but in my kinder moments I see the sense for a reminder.

“We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.”

Blaise Pascal