Quotations from Blaise Pascal


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A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.


How useless is painting, which attracts admiration by the resemblance of things, the originals of which we do not admire!


Imagination decides everything.
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I am stunned to find myself here rather than elsewhere.
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Man is obviously made to think.


Man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now, the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end. Now, of what does the world think? Never of this, but of dancing, playing the lute, singing, making verses, running at the ring, etc., fighting, making oneself king, without thinking what it is to be a king and what to be a man.


Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare; it is the pleasure even of kings.


Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study.


One thought alone occupies us; we cannot think of two things at the same time.


One thought alone occupies us; we cannot think of two things at the same time. This is lucky for us according to the world, not according to God.


Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.


Things which have most hold on us, as the concealment of our few possessions, are often a mere nothing. It is a nothing which our imagination magnifies into a mountain. Another turn of the imagination would make us discover this without difficulty.


We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.