The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
Blaise PascalWe are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
Blaise PascalAll the dignity of man consists in thought. Thought is therefore by its nature a wonderful and incomparable thing. It must have strange defects to be contemptible. But it has such, so that nothing is more ridiculous. How great it is in its nature! How vile it is in its defects! But what is this thought? How foolish it is!
Blaise PascalMen never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise PascalThe heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and naturally loves itself; and it gives itself to one or the other, and hardens itself against one or the other, as it chooses...it is the heart that feels God, not the reason; this is faith.
Blaise Pascal