Date of birth: 1623-06-19
Date of death: 1662-08-19
Quotes number: 130
Nationality: French
Profession: Philosopher
A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.
All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
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.
Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
