Top 748 Quotes & Sayings by Blaise Pascal - Page 3

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

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

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.

Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.

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

Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name!

Most of man's trouble comes from his inability to be still.

Don't try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.

We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.

Mutual cheating is the foundation of society.

The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.

Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.

Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.

And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?

We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.

The God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.

If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true and then show that it is.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.

The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.

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.

Either Christianity is true or it's false. If you bet that it's true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it IS true, you've gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it's false, you've lost nothing, but you've had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it's false, you've lost nothing. But if you bet that it's false, and it turns out to be true, you've lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell.

In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.

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.

All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that man cannot sit still in a room.

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.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

When intuition and logic agree, you are always right.

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.

If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.

What a vast difference there is between knowing God and loving Him.

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

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

Human beings do not know their place and purpose. They have fallen from their true place, and lost their true purpose. They search everywhere for their place and purpose, with great anxiety. But they cannot find them because they are surrounded by darkness.

Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.

If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.

Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.

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.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.

I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you.

Happiness is neither within us, nor without us. It is in the union of ourselves with God.

If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it's possible, in everything.

If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.

It's not those who write the laws that have the greatest impact on society. It's those who write the songs.

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

Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.

Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.