Blaise Pascal Quotes

The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.

The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.

Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.

Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.

The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live.

This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.

The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.

Losses are comparative; imagination only makes them of any moment.

The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.

E? loquence quipersuade par douceur, non par empire, en tyran, non en roi. Eloquence should persuade gently, not by force or like a tyrant or king.

Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is.

Eloquence; it requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.

We see neither justice nor injustice which does not change its nature with change in climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence; a meridian decides the truth.

Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.

Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.

Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.

When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.

Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.

No animal admires another animal.

Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.

(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.

Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.

Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.

Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.

If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.

The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.

How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!

Either God exists or He doesn't. Either I believe in God or I don't. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibility, I believe in God.

The Church limits her sacramental services to the faithful. Christ gave Himself upon the cross a ransom for all.

How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?

The world is satisfied with words. Few appreciate the things beneath. [Fr., Le monde se paye de paroles; peu approfondissement les choses.]

At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.

Continuous eloquence is tedious.

If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

Man governs himself more by impulse than reason

Look for the truth, it wants to be found.

True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of morality.

The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.

Why God has instituted Prayer:— To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.

It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

The eternal Being is forever if he is at all.

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.

If a soldier or labourer complain of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.