Quotes from Blaise Pascal

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

Men never do evil so thoroughly and cheerfully as when they do it for conscience sake.

All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.

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

The last act is bloody, no matter how happy the rest of the play.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

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

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

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

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

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.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

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.

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

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.

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

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

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.

Imagination decides everything.

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things.

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

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

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.