Quotes from Blaise Pascal

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.

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

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

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.

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

Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also.

The art of revolutionizing and overturning states is to undermine established customs, by going back to their origin, in order to mark their want of justice.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one wants.

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.

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.

Look for the truth, it wants to be found.

No animal admires another animal.

Continuity in everything is unpleasant.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relation of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Losses are comparative, only imagination makes them of any moment.

Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of his soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair.

If a soldier or labourer complains of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.

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.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

The heart has reasons which reason cannot understand.