Quotes By Blaise Pascal

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

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

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

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

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.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

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!

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

Law, without force, is impotent.

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.

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.

We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

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

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

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.

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

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