Quotes from Blaise Pascal

Nature has perfection, in order to show that she is the image of God and defects, to show that she is only his image.

Our heart has its reasons that reason cannot know.

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

The heart has arguments with which the logic of mind is not aquainted.

The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion.

There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.

Truth is so obscure in these times and falsehood so established that unless one loves the truth, he cannot know it.

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

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

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

When a national discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." ( Letter 16 , 1657)

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

I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

You always admire what you really don't understand.

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

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

I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.