Blaise Pascal Quotes
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All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.
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Nothing is so conformable to reason as to disavow reason.
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Not the zeal alone of those who seek Him proves God, but the blindness of those who seek Him not.
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Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.
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Faith is a gift of God.
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...for the truth is always older than all the opinions men have held regarding it; and one should be ignoring the nature of truth if we imagined that the truth began at the time it came to be known.
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Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.
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Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?
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We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
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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?
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We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.
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We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.
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Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
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The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
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La dernie' re chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la premie' re. The last thing one discovers in composing a work iswhat to put first.
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Too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the wherewithal to overpay our debts.
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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 vapour, 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 none of this.
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Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.
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There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.
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Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.
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The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.
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The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
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[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.
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All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end.