Blaise Pascal

And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

Blaise Pascal

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

Two kinds of persons know Him: those who have a humble heart, and who love lowliness, whatever kind of intellect they may have, high or low; and those who have sufficient understanding to see the truth, whatever opposition they may have to it.

Blaise Pascal

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

Blaise Pascal

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons.

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Blaise Pascal

Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

Blaise Pascal

True nature being lost, everything becomes its own nature; as the true good being lost, everything becomes its own true good.

Blaise Pascal

Venerable, because it has perfect knowledge of man; lovable because it promises the true good.

Blaise Pascal

This religion taught to her children what men have only been able to discover by their greatest knowledge.

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put him?

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

Weariness.Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness.

Blaise Pascal

It is a strange and long war, the war that violence is forever waging against truth. All the efforts of violence are powerless to weaken truth, and serve only to make it stronger. All the lights of truth are powerless to stop violence, and serve only to make it angrier. Do not suppose, however, that the two are equal: there is one very great difference between them. The course of violence is directed by God who channels its effects to the exaltation of the truth it attacks; whereas truth subsists eternally and in the end triumphs over its enemies, for it is eternal and powerful as God himself.

Blaise Pascal

Habit is the second nature which destroys the first.

Blaise Pascal

Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery; in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.

Blaise Pascal

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

Blaise Pascal

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe they are sinners, the sinners who believe they are righteous.

Blaise Pascal

People act as though our mission were to secure the triumph of truth, whereas our sole mission is fight for it. The wish to be victorious is so natural that when it clothes itself in the desire for the triumph of truth, the two are often confused, and people imagine that they are pursuing their own.

Blaise Pascal