Blaise Pascal Quotes

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

The law required what it could not give. Grace gives that which it requires.

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.

I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true.

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.

By a peculiar prerogative, not only each individual is making daily advances in the sciences, and may make advances in morality (which is the science, by way of eminence, of living well and being happy), but all mankind together is making a continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older. So that the whole human race, during the course of so many ages, may be considered as one man who never ceases to live and learn.

Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.

The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves.

The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

We do not worry about being respected in towns through which we pass. But if we are going to remain in one for a certain time, we do worry. How long does this time have to be?

Imagination decides everything.

No soul of high estate can take pleasure in slander. It betrays a weakness.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

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.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

Do they think that they have given us great pleasure by telling us that they hold our soul to be no more than wind or smoke, and saying it moreover in tones of pride and satisfaction? Is this then something to be said gaily? Is it not on the contrary something to be said sadly, as being the saddest thing in the world?

We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.

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.

True eloquence scorns eloquence.

Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.

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

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

If a soldier or labourer complain of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.

Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny.

That which makes us go so far for love is that we never think that we might have need of anything besides that which we love.

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

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.

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.

All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theater. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love.

Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

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.

Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward merit, for all will say that they are meritorious.

All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.

He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire them.

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.

Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado toward God.

So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities. Therefore those who have known God, without knowing their wretchedness, have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves.

Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.

Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real.