Blaise Pascal Quotes on Nature (19 Quotes)

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God and defects, to show that she is only his image.

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

Nature confuses the skeptics and reason confutes the dogmatists

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Man is but a reed, the most weak in nature, but he is a thinking reed

All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.

Nature diversifies and imitates art imitates and diversifies.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

Nature has some perfections to show that she is the image of God, and some defects to show that she is only His image.

For after all what is man in nature A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

What does this desire and this inability of ours proclaim to us but that there was once in man a genuine happiness, of which nothing now survives but the mark and the empty outline and this he vainly tries to fill from everything that lies around him, seeking from things that are not there the help that he does not get from those that are present Yet they are quite incapable of filling the gap, because this infinite gulf can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object - that is, God, Himself. He alone is man's veritable good, and since man has deserted Him it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature that has not been capable of taking His place for man stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since he has lost the true good, everything can equally appear to him as such - even his own destruction, though that is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature.

Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.