Blaise Pascal Quotes
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Reason's last step is to acknowledge that there are infinitely many things beyond it.
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Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.
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Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only go so far, but faith has no limits.
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There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.
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Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
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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.
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Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.
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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.
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It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.
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If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.
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All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.
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Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
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There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
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Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.
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Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.
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Everything that is incomprehensible does not, however, cease to exist.
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Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them.
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No animal admires another animal.
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The philosophers talk to you about the dignity of man, and they tempt you to pride, or they talk to you about the misery of man, and they tempt you to despair.
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The imagination disposes of everything. It creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are the whole of the world.
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Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God.
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The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.
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There is no arena in which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation.
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It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.