Werk
Les Pensées
Blaise PascalBlaise Pascal Berühmte Zitate
„Allein ist der Mensch ein unvollkommenes Ding; er muss einen zweiten finden, um glücklich zu sein.“
Wissen des Herzens: Gedanken und Erfahrungen des großen abendländischen Philosophen, P. Eisele, Bern/München/Wien, o.J., ISBN 3502330077
Pensées IV, 277
Original franz.: "Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas."
Pensées II, 72
Original franz.: "Infiniment éloigné de comprendre les extrêmes, la fin des choses et leur principe sont pour lui invinciblement cachés dans un secret impénétrable, également incapable de voir le néant d'où il est tiré, et l'infini où il est englouti."
„Die Gerechtigkeit ist ohnmächtig ohne die Macht; die Macht ist tyrannisch ohne die Gerechtigkeit.“
Pensées V, 298
Original franz.: "La justice sans la force est impuissante; la force sans la justice est tyrannique."
Zitate über Menschen von Blaise Pascal
Pensées I, 33
Original franz.: "Les hommes sont si nécessairement fous, que ce serait être fou par un autre tour de folie de n'être pas fou."
Pensées II, 139
Original franz.: "Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne pas savoir demeurer en repos, dans une chambre."
Pensées VI, 347
Original franz.: "L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature; mais c'est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l'univers entier s'arme pour l'écraser: une vapeur, une goutte d'eau, suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l'univers l'écraserait, l'homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, puisqu'il sait qu'il meurt, et l'avantage que l'univers a sur lui; l'univers n'en sait rien. Toute notre dignité consiste donc en la pensée."
Pensées VI, 358
Original franz.: "L'homme n'est ni ange ni bête, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête."
„Je mehr Einsicht man hat, desto mehr Größe und Niedrigkeit entdeckt man im Menschen.“
Pensées VII, 443
Original franz.: "A mesure qu'on a plus de lumière, on découvre plus de grandeur et plus de bassesse dans l'homme."
Zitate über Gott von Blaise Pascal
„Möge Gott mich nie verlassen!“
Letzte Worte, 17.August 1662
"Puisse Dieu ne jamais m'abandonner."
Letzte Worte
„Wenn du Gott zum Lachen bringen willst, erzähle ihm von deinen Plänen.“
Das Zitat wird fälschlicherweise Woody Allen zugeschrieben.
Quelle: https://www.archemed.org/aktuelles/123-wenn-du-gott-zum-lachen-bringen-willst-erzaehle-ihm-von-deinen-plaenen
Blaise Pascal Zitate und Sprüche
Pensées XIV, 871
Original franz.: "La multitude qui ne se réduit pas à l'unité est confusion; l'unité qui ne dépend pas de la multitude est tyrannie."
Pensées II, 147
Original franz.: "Nous ne nous contentons pas de la vie que nous avons en nous et en notre propre être: nous voulons vivre dans l'idée des autres une vie imaginaire, et nous nous efforçons pour cela de paraître."
Lettres Provinciales, SEIZIÈME LETTRE
Fälschlich zugeschrieben
„Das Herz hat seine Gründe, die der Verstand nicht kennt.“
Pensées IV, 277
Original franz.: "Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas."
„Es gibt sehr viele Leute, die glauben - aber aus Aberglauben.“
Pensées IV, 256
Original franz.: "Il y en a beaucoup qui croient, mais par superstition."
„Wer die Eitelkeit der Welt nicht sieht, ist selbst eitel.“
Pensées, II, 164 (Eitelkeit hier im Sinne von Vergänglichkeit.)
Original franz.: "Qui ne voit pas la vanité du monde est bien vain lui-même."
„Zu unserer Natur gehört die Bewegung, die vollkommene Ruhe ist der Tod.“
Pensées II, 129
Original franz.: "Notre nature est dans le mouvement: le repos entier est la mort."
Pensées. Deutsch von Wolfgang Rüttenauer (nach https://books.google.de/books?id=FE4eDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA177)
"Nous courons sans souci dans le précipice après que nous avons mis quelque chose devant nous pour nous empêcher de le voir." - Fragment Commencement n° 16 / 16 penseesdepascal.fr http://www.penseesdepascal.fr/Commencement/Commencement16-approfondir.php
Pascal's Briefe an einen Freund in der Provinz. Deutsch von Karl Adolf Blech. Sechzehnter Brief: Jesuitische Verläumdungen. Berlin 1841. S. 364 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=besrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA364&dq=l%C3%A4nger
Original franz.: "mes Lettres n’avaient pas accoutumé de se suivre de si près, ni d’être si étendues. Le peu de temps que j’ai eu a été cause de l’un et de l’autre. Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." - Les Provinciales ou les Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte à un provincial de ses amis et aux RR. PP. Jésuites. 16e lettre, 4 décembre 1656, fr.wikisource, Köln 1698 p. 285 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=Bd9GAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA285&dq=longue
Blaise Pascal: Zitate auf Englisch
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
Often misattributed to Twain, this is actually by Blaise Pascal, "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657:
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Translation: I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the opportunity to make it shorter.
Misattributed
Quelle: The Provincial Letters
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Variante: All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.
Quelle: Pensées
“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much”
Variante: Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Kontext: This right which you have, is not founded any more than his upon any quality or any merit in yourself which renders you worthy of it. Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the state of boatman or that of duke; and there is no natural bond that attaches them to one condition rather than to another.
“All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner”
Montaigne, Essais, liv. III, chap. viii.—Faugère
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation http://books.google.com/books?id=iRBEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA452& pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make.... let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds... it will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them... the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.
“If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize”
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Kontext: If you act externally with men in conformity with your rank, you should recognize, by a more secret but truer thought, that you have nothing naturally superior to them.
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Kontext: All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart as equal with all men... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring to discover to you.
Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne
Kontext: These two states which it is necessary to know together in order to see the whole truth, being known separately, lead necessarily to one of these two vices, pride or indolence, in which all men are invariably led before grace, since if they do not remain in their disorders through laxity, they forsake them through vanity, so true is that which you have just repeated to me from St. Augustine, and which I find to a great extent; for in fact homage is rendered to them in many ways.
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: One of the principal reasons that diverts those who are entering upon this knowledge so much from the true path which they should follow, is the fancy that they take at the outset that good things are inaccessible, giving them the name great, lofty, elevated, sublime. This destroys everything. I would call them low, common, familiar: these names suit it better; I hate such inflated expressions.
“We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.”
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Kontext: All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart as equal with all men... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring to discover to you.
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Kontext: It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.
“The method of not erring is sought by all the world.”
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.
“As to the objection that these rules are common in the world”
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: As to the objection that these rules are common in the world, that it is necessary to define every thing and to prove every thing, and that logicians themselves have placed them among their art, I would that the thing were true and that it were so well known... But so little is this the case, that, geometricians alone excepted, who are so few in number that they are a single in a whole nation and long periods of time, we see no others that know it.
“If it is pleasing to observe in nature her desire to paint God in all his works”
Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne
Kontext: If it is pleasing to observe in nature her desire to paint God in all his works, in which we see some traces of him because they are his images, how much more just is it to consider in the productions of minds the efforts which they make to imitate the essential truth, even in shunning it, and to remark wherein they attain it and wherein they wander from it, as I have endeavored to do in this study.
“Nothing is more common than good things: the point in question is only to discriminate them”
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: Nothing is more common than good things: the point in question is only to discriminate them; and it is certain that they are all natural and within our reach and even known to all mankind.
Discourses on the Condition of the Great
Kontext: Do not imagine that it is less an accident by which you find yourself master of the wealth which you possess, than that by which this man found himself king.
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: This art, which I call the art of persuading, and which, properly speaking, is simply the process of perfect methodical proofs, consists of three essential parts: of defining the terms of which we should avail ourselves by clear definitions, of proposing principles of evident axioms to prove the thing in question; and of always mentally substituting in the demonstrations the definition in the place of the thing defined.
“One, knowing the duties of man and being ignorant of his impotence, is lost in presumption”
Conversation on Epictetus and Montaigne
Kontext: One, knowing the duties of man and being ignorant of his impotence, is lost in presumption, and that the other, knowing the impotence and being ignorant of the duty, falls into laxity; whence it seems that since the one leads to truth, the other to error, there would be formed from their alliance a perfect system of morals. But instead of this peace, nothing but war and a general ruin would result from their union; for the one establishing certainty, the other doubt, the one the greatness of man, the other his weakness, they would destroy the truths as well as the falsehoods of each other. So that they cannot subsist alone because of their defects, nor unite because of their opposition, and thus they break and destroy each other to give place to the truth of the Gospel. This it is that harmonizes the contrarieties by a wholly divine act, and uniting all that is true and expelling all that is false, thus makes of them a truly celestial wisdom in which those opposites accord that were incompatible in human doctrines.
“God alone can place them in the soul”
The Art of Persuasion
Kontext: I do not speak here of divine truths... because they are infinitely superior to nature: God alone can place them in the soul... I know that he has desired that they should enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into the heart, to humiliate that proud power of reasoning that pretends to the right to be the judge of the things that the will chooses; and to cure this infirm will which is wholly corrupted by its filthy attachments.
