Famous Quotes

Quotes by Blaise Pascal

• All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
• As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
• Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
• 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.
• 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?
• Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them no art can keep or acquire them.
• Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
• Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
• Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see it is above, not against them.
• Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
• 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.
• Faith is different from proof the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
• 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.
• Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.
• He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.
• Human beings must be known to be loved but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
• I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
• If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
• If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
• If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
• Imagination decides everything.
• Imagination disposes of everything it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
• 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.
• In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
• It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
• It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
• It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.
• 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.
• Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
• Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
• Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
• Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
• Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
• Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.
• Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
• Men blaspheme what they do not know.
• Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
• Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
• Men often take their imagination for their heart and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.