Blaise Pascal

“There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We know the truth, not only be the reason, but also be the heart.” ~ Blaise Pascal

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

“When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.” ~ Blaise Pascal

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

“All of human unhappiness comes from one single thing: not knowing how to remain at rest in a room.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We show greatness, not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men’s souls, and a beautiful image it is.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his every-day conduct.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Education produces natural intuitions, and natural intuitions are erased by education.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Thought constitutes the greatness of man. Man is a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All our dignity lies in our thoughts.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Do little things as if they were great, because of the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ who dwells in thee.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“God instituted prayer to communicate to creatures the dignity of causality.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“It is much better to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All mankind’s troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man is neither angel nor beast.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Things are always at their best in their beginning.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Let us weigh the gain and the loss, in wagering that God is. Consider these alternatives: if you win, you win all, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then, to wager that he is.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Faith affirms many things, respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing that they deny. It is superior, but never opposed to their testimony.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“If ignorance were bliss, he’d be a blister.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you – will quiet your proudly critical intellect.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“No soul of high estate can take pleasure in slander. It betrays a weakness.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Love has no age as it is always renewing itself.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind…” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Notre nature est dans le mouvement; le repos entier est la mort. Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I should not be a Christian but for the miracles.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The property of power is to protect.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it’s possible, in everything.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name!” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress, and which lifts us up.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.” ~ Blaise Pascal

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

“Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The best defense against logic is ignorance.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Either God exists or He doesn’t. Either I believe in God or I don’t. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibility, I believe in God.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference…” ~ Blaise Pascal

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

“Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Le silence e ternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“A given man lives a life free from boredom by gambling a small sum every day. Give him every morning the money he might win that day, but on condition that he does not gamble, and you will make him unhappy.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“To understand is to forgive.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Symmetry is what we see at a glance.” ~ Blaise Pascal

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

“Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“What amazes me the most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We must make good people wish that the Christian faith were true, and then show that it is.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I know whom I have believed.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All mankind’s unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“In 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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The married should not forget that to speak of love begets love.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Imagination decides everything.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Little things console us because little things afflict us.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The gospel to me is simply irresistible.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“You always admire what you really don’t understand.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Any unity which doesn’t have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything bears this mark.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Most of man’s trouble comes from his inability to be still.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“By thought I embrace the universe.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The only shame is to have none.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Habit is the second nature which destroys the first.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn’t than live as if he doesn’t exist to find out He does.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Piety is different from superstition. To carry piety to the extent of superstition is to destroy it. The heretics reproach us with this superstitious submission. It is doing what they reproach us with.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Faith is a gift of God.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Perfect clarity would profit the intellect but damage the will.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity. The greatness of the human soul is shown by knowing how to keep within proper bounds. There are two equally dangerous extremes- to shut reason out, and not to let nothing in.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Don’t try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“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?” ~ Blaise Pascal

“It’s not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It’s those who write the songs.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can only go so far, but faith has no limits.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We can only know God well when we know our own sin. And those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified Him but have glorified themselves.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Man’s sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain anything from God, that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, and soon, in order that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, may be now subject to the creature.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“What reason have atheists for saying that we cannot rise again? That what has never been, should be, or that what has been, should be again? Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We see neither justice nor injustice which does not change its nature with change in climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence; a meridian decides the truth.” ~ Blaise Pascal

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

“How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Put the world’s greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be; if there is a precipe below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Law, without force, is impotent.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The serene, silent beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world, next to the night of God.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Wisdom leads us back to childhood.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“It is man’s natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“If you believe in God you are at no disadvantage in this life, and at considerable advantage in the next. If you do not believe, but find in the next that there was a next, you are most unfortunate!” ~ Blaise Pascal

“Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.” ~ Blaise Pascal