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
There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.
As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves.
Without [diversion] we would be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.
Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?
Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.
If all persons knew what they said of each other there would not be four friends in the world
Love has its reasons that Reason knows not
Le coeur a ses raisons dont le cerveau ne sait nul. T: 'The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing.'
Nature diversifies and imitates; art imitates and diversifies.
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe they are sinners, the sinners who believe they are righteous.
Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.
Man is but a reed, the most weak in nature, but he is a thinking reed