Blaise Pascal > Quotes

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
― Blaise Pascal

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“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

“I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
― 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, Pensees

“You always admire what you really don't understand.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadow for those who don't.”
― Blaise Pascal

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.”
― 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

“I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.”
― Blaise Pascal

“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Little things comfort us because little things distress us.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings

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

“Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.
(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)”
― Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Pensees

“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

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

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

“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensees

“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“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.”
― 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

“Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.”
― Blaise Pascal

“By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.”
― Blaise Pascal, Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects

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

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

“Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie - The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensees

“And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?”
― Blaise Pascal

“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“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

“When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.”
― Blaise Pascal

“To understand is to forgive.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.”
― Blaise Pascal

“I ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory ... You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master, do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Take from me, O Lord, that self-pity which love of myself so readily produces, and from the frustration of not succeeding in the world as I would naturally desire, for these have no regard for Your glory. Rather, create in me a sorrow that is conformable to Your own. Let my pains rather express the happy condition of my conversion and salvation. Let me no longer wish for health or life, but to spend it and end it for You, with You, and in You. I pray neither for health nor sickness, life nor death. Rather I pray that You will dispose of my health, my sickness, my life, and my death, as for Your glory, for my salvation, for the usefulness to Your church and Your saints, among whom I hope to be numbered. You alone know what is expedient for me. You are the Sovereign Master. Do whatever pleases You. Give me or take away from me. Conform my will to Yours, and grant that with a humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may dispose myself utterly to You. May I receive the orders of Your everlasting provident care. May I equally adore whatever proceeds from You.”
― Blaise Pascal, The Mind on Fire: A Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent

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

“There are only two kinds of people we can call reasonable: either those who serve God with their whole heart because they know him, or those who search after him with all their heart because they do not know him.”
― Blaise Pascal

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

“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them. ”
― 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

“There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.”
― Blaise Pascal

“We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensees