Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascalwas a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific method...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth19 June 1623
CityClermont-Ferrand, France
CountryFrance
Love has its reasons that Reason knows not
Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.
It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.
We never love a person, but only qualities.
Who can doubt that we exist only to love? Disguise it, in fact, as we will, we love without intermission... We live not a moment exempt from its influence.
The married should not forget that to speak of love begets love.
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.
That which makes us go so far for love is that we never think that we might have need of anything besides that which we love.
If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.
When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.
We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
We make an idol of truth itself, for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and an idol that we must not love or worship.