Blaise Pascal quotes

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.

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

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

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

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.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

Imagination decides everything.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

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.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

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

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

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

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

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

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

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

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

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

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

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.

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

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

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

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

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

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

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

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.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

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

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.

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.