Quotes By Author: Blaise Pascal
“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.”
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“Nie betrieben die Menschen das Böse so umfassend und freudig wie aus religiöser Überzeugung.”
“Since we cannot know all there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.”
“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.”
“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
“He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright”
“It is man’s natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.”
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.”
“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.”
“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.”
“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”