Blaise Pascal

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

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.

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?

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

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

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

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.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.

If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.

If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Imagination decides everything.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

I n each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

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

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

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

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you.

Our nature consist in motion; complete rest is death.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

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

The present is never our goal: the past and present are our means: the future alone is our goal. Thus, we never live but we hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

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

Vanity is but the surface.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

You always admire what you really don't understand.