Blaise Pascal Quotes
French - Philosopher June 19, 1623 - August 19, 1662

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

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
Blaise Pascal

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
Blaise Pascal

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.
Blaise Pascal

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

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
Blaise Pascal

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

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Blaise Pascal

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.
Blaise Pascal

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
Blaise Pascal

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

Vanity is but the surface.
Blaise Pascal

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

Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.
Blaise Pascal

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

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
Blaise Pascal

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

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Blaise Pascal

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal

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.
Blaise Pascal

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

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
Blaise Pascal

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
Blaise Pascal

Little things console us because little things afflict us.
Blaise Pascal

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

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
Blaise Pascal

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
Blaise Pascal

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

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.
Blaise Pascal

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

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
Blaise Pascal

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.
Blaise Pascal

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

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.
Blaise Pascal

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

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
Blaise Pascal

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
Blaise Pascal

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
Blaise Pascal

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
Blaise Pascal

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
Blaise Pascal

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

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
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

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
Blaise Pascal

Law, without force, is impotent.
Blaise Pascal

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

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

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
Blaise Pascal

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.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

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.
Blaise Pascal

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
Blaise Pascal

Men blaspheme what they do not know.
Blaise Pascal

Imagination decides everything.
Blaise Pascal

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
Blaise Pascal

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.
Blaise Pascal

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

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

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

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

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

We never love a person, but only qualities.
Blaise Pascal

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.
Blaise Pascal

The only shame is to have none.
Blaise Pascal

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

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

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

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
Blaise Pascal