Top 90 Blaise Pascal Quotes

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

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

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.

The only shame is to have none.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

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

Vanity is but the surface.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

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.

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.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

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

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?

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

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.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

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.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

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

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

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.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

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!

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.

The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

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

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

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