Blaise Pascal

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

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

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

Law, without force, is impotent.

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

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

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.

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

Imagination decides everything.

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 only shame is to have none.

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

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.

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

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

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

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

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

Vanity is but the surface.

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.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

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.

The self is hateful.

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

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

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

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

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

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

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.

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.

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

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

We never love a person, but only qualities.

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

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

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

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

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.