Zitat des Tages von Blaise Pascal:
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
Vanity is but the surface.
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.
Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
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.
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.
Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.
Imagination decides everything.
Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.
Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.
If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.