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
La chose la plus importante a' toute la vie est le choix du me tier: le hasard en dispose. The most important thing in life is to choose a profession: chance arranges for that.
E? loquence quipersuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran, non en roi. Eloquence should persuade gently, not by force or like a tyrant or king.
Le nez de Cle opa" tre: s'il e u" t e te plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait change . Cleopatra'snose: if it had beenshorter the whole face of the earth would have been different.
Notre nature est dans le mouvement; le repos entier est la mort. Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.
Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.
Description of man: dependence, longing for independence, need.
The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.
I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true.
How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.
The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.
The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.
Who knows if this other half of life where we think we're awake is not another sleep a little different from the first.