Blaise Pascal Quotes
Blaise Pascal was born on the 19th of June, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, writer and Catholic theologian.
Blaise Pascal was educated at home by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. He was the third of four children and an only son to Etienne and Antoinette Pascal.
Throughout his life, Blaise Pascal was in frail health, especially after the age of 18. He died on the 19th of August, 1662 in Paris, France at the age of 39.
In this article, you will find an array of famous Blaise Pascal quotes about religion, God, life, and love.
60 Blaise Pascal Quotes About Life, God And Religion
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”― Blaise Pascal
“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”― Blaise Pascal
“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”― Blaise Pascal
“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.”― Blaise Pascal
“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”― Blaise Pascal
“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”― Blaise Pascal
“The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.”― Blaise Pascal
“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”― Blaise Pascal
“When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.”― Blaise Pascal
“Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other.”― Blaise Pascal
“The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.”― Blaise Pascal
“And if one loves me for my judgement, memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this Ego, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul? And how love the body or the soul, except for these qualities which do not constitute me, since they are perishable? For it is impossible and would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract and whatever qualities might be therein. We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.
Let us, then, jeer no more at those who are honoured on account of rank and office; for we love a person only on account of borrowed qualities.”― Blaise Pascal
Let us, then, jeer no more at those who are honoured on account of rank and office; for we love a person only on account of borrowed qualities.”― Blaise Pascal
“Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.”― Blaise Pascal
“There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition”― Blaise Pascal
“We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.”― Blaise Pascal
“Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.”― Blaise Pascal
“He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright”― Blaise Pascal
“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.”― Blaise Pascal
“God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity would help the mind and harm the will.”― Blaise Pascal
“Unless we know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, concupiscence, weakness, wretchedness and unrighteousness, we are truly blind. And if someone knows all this and does not desire to be saved, what can be said of him?”― Blaise Pascal
“The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd.”― Blaise Pascal
“God instituted prayer to communicate to creatures the dignity of causality.”― Blaise Pascal
“There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature… and the thing which pleases us.”― Blaise Pascal
“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.”― Blaise Pascal
“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference…”― Blaise Pascal
“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?”― Blaise Pascal
“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”― Blaise Pascal
“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.”― Blaise Pascal
“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.”― Blaise Pascal
“Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”― Blaise Pascal
“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.”― Blaise Pascal
“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.”― Blaise Pascal
“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.”― Blaise Pascal
“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.”― Blaise Pascal
“Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. but even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. The universe knows none of this.”― Blaise Pascal
“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.”― Blaise Pascal
“Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.”― Blaise Pascal
“If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn’t find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place. ”― Blaise Pascal
“The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.”― Blaise Pascal
“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”― Blaise Pascal
“We run carelessly over the precipice after having put something in front of us to prevent us seeing it.”― Blaise Pascal
“Jesus is a God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.”― Blaise Pascal
“It is dangerous to explain too clearly to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him.
Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.”― Blaise Pascal
Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.”― Blaise Pascal
“We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“We make an idol of truth itself, for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and an idol that we must not love or worship.”― Blaise Pascal
“When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a labourer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth”― Blaise Pascal
“The power of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.”― Blaise Pascal
“Since we cannot know all there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.”― Blaise Pascal
“By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.”― Blaise Pascal
“The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.”― Blaise Pascal
“Atheists. What grounds have they for saying that no one can rise from the dead? Which is harder, to be born or to rise again? That what has never been should be, or that what has been should be once more? Is it harder to come into existence than to come back? Habit makes us find the one easy, while lack of habit makes us find the other impossible.”― Blaise Pascal
“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.”―Blaise Pascal
“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”― Blaise Pascal
20 Short Blaise Pascal Quotes
“Kind words don’t cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”― Blaise Pascal
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”― Blaise Pascal
“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”― Blaise Pascal
“When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.”― Blaise Pascal
“Little things comfort us because little things distress us.”― Blaise Pascal
“To understand is to forgive.”― Blaise Pascal
“Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.”― Blaise Pascal
“Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.”― Blaise Pascal
“Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.”― Blaise Pascal
“Man’s grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.”― Blaise Pascal
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me”― Blaise Pascal
“The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.”― Blaise Pascal
“In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.”― Blaise Pascal
“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
― Blaise Pascal
― Blaise Pascal
“It is man’s natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.”― Blaise Pascal
“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.”― Blaise Pascal
“Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.”― Blaise Pascal
“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”― Blaise Pascal
“You always admire what you really don’t understand.”― Blaise Pascal
“To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.”― Blaise Pascal