Blaise Pascal Quotes

420 Sourced Quotes

One of the principal reasons that diverts those who are entering upon this knowledge so much from the true path which they should follow, is the fancy that they take at the outset that good things are inaccessible, giving them the name great, lofty, elevated, sublime. This destroys everything. I would call them low, common, familiar: these names suit it better; I hate such inflated expressions.

Blaise Pascal
God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.

Blaise Pascal
Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations; for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object. Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.

Blaise Pascal
A few rules include all that is necessary for the perfection of the definitions, the axioms, and the demonstrations, and consequently of the entire method of the geometrical proofs of the art of persuading.

Blaise Pascal
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

Blaise Pascal
It is not shameful for man to succumb under pain, and it is shameful for him to succumb under pleasure.

Blaise Pascal
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Blaise Pascal
For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in respect of that which is infinite, an all in respect of nothing, a middle betwixt nothing and all.

Blaise Pascal
A pious man said: "If I ignored the existence of God, I would adore the sun and women."

Blaise Pascal
Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Blaise Pascal
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.

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
Several particular maxims... are as powerful, although false, in carrying away belief, as those the most true.

Blaise Pascal
All the excesses, all the violence, and all the vanity of great men, come from the fact that they know not what they are: it being difficult for those who regard themselves at heart as equal with all men... For this it is necessary for one to forget himself, and to believe that he has some real excellence above them, in which consists this illusion that I am endeavoring to discover to you.

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
If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.

Blaise Pascal
What amazes me the most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness.

Blaise Pascal
Little things console us, because little things afflict us.

Blaise Pascal
How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.

Blaise Pascal
Thus he had a double thought: the one by which he acted as king, the other by which he recognized his true state, and that it was accident alone that had placed him in his present condition.

Blaise Pascal
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.

Blaise Pascal
There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.

Blaise Pascal
Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.

Blaise Pascal
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.

Blaise Pascal
All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Blaise Pascal
We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness--the eighth beatitude.

Blaise Pascal
For it is to judgment that perception belongs, as science belongs to intellect. Intuition is the part of judgment, mathematics of intellect.

Blaise Pascal
We may have three main objects in the study of truth: first, to find it when we are seeking it; second, to demonstrate it after we have found it; third, to distinguish it from error by examining it.

Blaise Pascal
Let no one say that I have said nothing new... the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better.

Blaise Pascal
There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.

Blaise Pascal