Blaise Pascal Quotes
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If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.
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Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
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We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.
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Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
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Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.
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If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.
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Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
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To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.
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As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.
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When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true.
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Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and finds fault with him who escapes it at whichever end... To leave the mean is to abandon humanity.
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Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything...
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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
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That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth. [Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]
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Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.
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Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
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Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
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Rivers are roads that move and carry us whither we wish to go. [Fr., Les rivieres sont des chemins qui marchant et qui portent ou l'on veut aller.]
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There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.
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True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of morality.
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To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.
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All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
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Law was once introduced without reason, and has become reasonable.
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Without the knowledge of our wretchedness, the knowledge of God creates pride. With it, the knowledge of God creates despair. The knowledge of Christ offers a third way, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.