Blaise Pascal Quotes

"The only shame is to have none."

"Evil is easy, and has infinite forms."

"Men blaspheme what they do not know."

"Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts."

"The gospel to me is simply irresistible."

"A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us."

"Man's greatness lies in his power of thought."

"All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling."

"Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason."

"Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak."

"Love has reasons which reason cannot understand."

"Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death."

"Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed."

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

"Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary."

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

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

"What amazes me the most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness."

"Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet.—Mahomet was not foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold."

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

"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine, but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through false appearances, and the senses are disturbed by passions, which produce false impressions."

Compiled by Thomas George
editor@Wisdom-of-the-Wise.com