Blaise Pascal Quotes About Desire

Quotes about: Desire

• All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

  Blaise Pascal

  Happiness, War, Mean

  Blaise Pascal (1959). “Pascal's Pensées: Selections”, p.114, Prabhat Prakashan

• Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.

  Blaise Pascal

  Moving, Rivers, Water

  Blaise Pascal (2016). “Pensées”, p.23, Open Road Media

• There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition

  Blaise Pascal

  Light, Desire, Obscurity

  Blaise Pascal, W. F. Trotter, T. S. Eliot (2003). “Pensees”, p.118, Courier Corporation

• One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Practice, Names

• Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

  Blaise Pascal

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Desire

  "Pensées" by Blaise Pascal, (Ch. 72), 1669.

• Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way.

  Blaise Pascal

  Love, Math, Men

• Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.

  Blaise Pascal

  Reading, Writing, Math

• If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?

  Blaise Pascal

  Ambition, Pride, Men

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

• Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

  Blaise Pascal

  Writing, Wish, Desire

• Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

  Blaise Pascal

  Desire, Our Actions, Causes

• What is it, in your opinion, to be a great nobleman? It is to be master of several objects that men covet, and thus to be able to satisfy the wants and the desires of many. It is these
  wants and these desires that attract them towards you, and that make them submit to you: were it not for these, they would not even look at you; but they hope, by these services... to obtain
  from you some part of the good which they desire, and of which they see that you have the disposal.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Desire, Looks

  Blaise Pascal (1961). “Thoughts”

• You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefore properly the king of desire. ...equal
  in this to the greatest kings of the earth... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.

  Blaise Pascal

  Kings, Men, Circles

  Blaise Pascal (2007). “Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works”, p.387, Cosimo, Inc.

• Christianity is strange. It bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would make him terribly abject.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Desire, Strange

  Blaise Pascal (1910). “Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works”

• St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Temptation, Desire

  Blaise Pascal (1849). “Thoughts of Blaise Pascal”, p.371

• We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.

  Blaise Pascal

  Desire, Misery, Certainty

  Blaise Pascal (2015). “Pensees: Thoughts on Religion”, p.136, Letcetera Publishing

• Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against vanity want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it.

  Blaise Pascal

  Philosophical, Writing, Heart

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pensées”, p.46, Courier Corporation

• We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real.

  Blaise Pascal

  Real, Vanity, Hypocrisy

  Blaise Pascal (1910). “Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works”

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