Blaise Pascal Quotes

And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?

The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.

We like to be deceived.

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.

Continuity in everything is unpleasant.

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

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

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.

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!

The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.

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

La vraie e loquence se moque de l'e loquence, la vraie morale se moque de la morale. True eloquence has notime foreloquence, true morality has no time for morality.

The stream is always purer at its source. [Fr., Les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur source.]

The stream is always purer at its source.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Vanity is but the surface.

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.

There is no arena in which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

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

The property of power is to protect.

Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.

Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss.

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

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

Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable.

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power.

Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first.

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

Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.

How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.

Christian piety annihilates the egoism of the heart; worldly politeness veils and represses it.

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

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

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

Great and small suffer the same mishaps.

Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.

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.

All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.

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

A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us.

Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.

To find recreation in amusement is not happiness.

The war existing between the senses and reason.

Quelque e tendue d'esprit que l'on ait, l'on n'est capable que d'une grande passion. However vast a man's spirit, he is only capable of one great passion.

There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.

The arithmetical machine produces effects that approach nearer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing that would enable us to attribute will to it, as to the animals.

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

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.