Pesons le gain et la perte, en prenant croix que Dieu est. Estimons ces deux cas: Si vous gagnez, vous gagnez tout; si vous perdez, vous ne perdez rien. Gagez donc qu’il est, sans hésiter!
Blaise Pascal
1623–1662
· lived 39 years
n. 1623-06-19, Clermont-Ferrand · m. 1662-08-19, Paris
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Quotes
156Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point .
Dieu est, ou il n’est pas. Mais de quel côté pencherons-nous? La raison n’y peut rien déterminer. Il y’a un chaos infini qui nous sépare. Il se joue un jeu, à l’extrémité de cette distance infinie, où il arrivera croix ou pile: que gagerez-vous?
L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant .
We shall die alone.
What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that 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? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.
C’est là ma place au soleil .
How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.
Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte .
Le nez de Cléopâtre s’il eût été plus court toute la face de la terre aurait changé .
I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy he did his best to dispense with God. But he could not avoid making Him set the world in motion with a flick of His finger; after that he had no more use for God.
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being.
FIRE . God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.
Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.
‘God is or he is not.’ But to which side shall we incline? … Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate the two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces [the heavens] terrifies me.
Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.
When we see a natural style, we are quite surprised and delighted, for we expected to see an author and we find a man.
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
I have made this [letter] longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
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