Blaise Pascal quotes - page 3

Men despise religion they hate it and fear it is true. (Blaise Pascal)
God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.
Blaise Pascal
A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us.
Blaise Pascal
The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.
Blaise Pascal
Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.
Blaise Pascal
There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices.
Blaise Pascal
When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there ... now instead of then.
Blaise Pascal
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.
Blaise Pascal
No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.
Blaise Pascal
Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them...the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.
Blaise Pascal
The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first. (Blaise Pascal)
You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefore properly the king of desire. ...equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.
Blaise Pascal
The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.
Blaise Pascal
One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
Blaise Pascal
The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
Blaise Pascal
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart." - Blaise Pascal.
Blaise Pascal
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference.
Blaise Pascal
If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn't find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.
Blaise Pascal
Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.
Blaise Pascal
A doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and... the knowledge of one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which man himself is scarcely ever conscious.
Blaise Pascal
They [men] have corrupted this [God's supernatural] order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us. (Blaise Pascal)
Several particular maxims... are as powerful, although false, in carrying away belief, as those the most true.
Blaise Pascal
In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.
Blaise Pascal
The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.
Blaise Pascal
Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
Blaise Pascal