Blaise Pascal Quotes
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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
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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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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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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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If god does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.
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To call a king "Prince" is pleasing, because it diminishes his rank.
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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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Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.
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Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.
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The property of power is to protect.
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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.
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Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
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It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.
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All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.
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Kind words produce their images on men's souls.
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The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.
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All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
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Making fun of philosophy is really philosophising.
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Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
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Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
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Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
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Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?
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It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.
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The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.