Blaise Pascal Quotes

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

And right this second I want to live in ignorant bliss.

One idea I explore in my stand-up show is whether, if you try looking at the universe rationally and avoid coping mechanisms like mysticism or religion, you can still be happy knowing you are going to die after a brief time on this spinning ball.

Denial of death at some point becomes a delusion.

I know mortality exists, but I cannot do anything about it. So it does not make me anxious.

That's maybe the reason he does so many things so that he will not have to think .

Most people cant' deal with reality, but indulge heavily in fantasy and fear.

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

You can see desperation in people who are too eager to laugh because they're in such a hurry not to look at what's confronting them in their lives and that's kind of sad because there's a kind of pornographic aspect to it, of making some sort of pain go away, of hovering around a pain, making yourself numb, not feel anything.

The possibility of killing one's self is a safety valve. Having it, man has no right to say life is unbearable.

People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.

All that lives is striving for happiness; yet a thousand and one pains and fears attend upon every pleasure which man seeks through the ignorance of exclusiveness.

O death! We thank you for the light that you will shed upon our ignorance.

Like the ostrich, head under wingWhen the roaring storm breaks,So many people take refugeUnder the soft pillowOf specious arguments.

We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically-with a genuine concern for the happiness of other sentient beings-without presuming to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

Of happy men that have the power to die, And grassy barrows of the happier dead.

Like any form of death, at some point you just have to get up and say yeah I'll take it, whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen and sorta chop your head off. It's easy to avoid all that...there's always another moment, another girl, another high, another drug, there's always something to distract you.

For really, dreaming is the well-mannered people's way of committing suicide.

But death doesn't scare me. To know exactly when I might expect it, up close and in my face, would actually be a comfort. Because to tell the truth, most of the time dying seems pretty much like my only means of escape.

Don't ask me how I am,' I blurt. 'Please.' I want to keep feeling good. Just because the lights are on doesn't mean I have to look.

He was in a room of the Gesshuuji, which he had thought it would be impossible to visit. The approach of death had made the visit easy, had unloosed the weight that held him in the depths of being. It was even a comfort to think, from the light repose the struggle up the hill had brought him, that Kiyoaki, struggling against illness up that same road, had been given wings to soar with by the denial that awaited him.

I think there is one smashing rule: never face the facts.

If you don't think you've got the blues, just keep living, and if you don't think you're drunk, just keep drinking what you're drinking.

Klaus sighed, and opened a book, and as at so many other times when the middle Baudelaire child did not want to think about his circumstances, he began to read.

We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.