Blaise Pascal
Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.Collection: Nature
The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.Collection: Confusion
La chose la plus importante a' toute la vie est le choix du me tier: le hasard en dispose. The most important thing in life is to choose a profession: chance arranges for that.Collection: Things In Life
Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.Collection: Reasonable
You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.Collection: Death
Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.Collection: Men
Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.Collection: Struggle
Too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the wherewithal to overpay our debts.Collection: Wish
Who can doubt that we exist only to love? Disguise it, in fact, as we will, we love without intermission... We live not a moment exempt from its influence.Collection: Love
The law required what it could not give. Grace gives that which it requires.Collection: Law
Do they think that they have given us great pleasure by telling us that they hold our soul to be no more than wind or smoke, and saying it moreover in tones of pride and satisfaction? Is this then something to be said gaily? Is it not on the contrary something to be said sadly, as being the saddest thing in the world?Collection: Pride
All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.Collection: Men
That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.Collection: Queens
Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.Collection: Knowledge
To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!Collection: Christian
Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.Collection: Pain
If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.Collection: Funny
The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live.Collection: Mean
Either God exists or He doesn't. Either I believe in God or I don't. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibility, I believe in God.Collection: God
The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.Collection: Heart
We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.Collection: Freedom
Not to be mad is another form of madnessCollection: Inspirational
The Church limits her sacramental services to the faithful. Christ gave Himself upon the cross a ransom for all.Collection: Faithful
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.Collection: Usual
To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.Collection: Horse
There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.Collection: Sadness
It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.Collection: Obedience
How I hate this folly of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.! If the gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?Collection: Jesus
All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.Collection: Struggle
How shall one who is so weak in his childhood become really strong when he grows older? We only change our fancies.Collection: Strong
The serene, silent beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world, next to the night of God.Collection: Powerful
The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.Collection: Atheist
Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ.Collection: Jesus
He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.Collection: Sea
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.Collection: Mind
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.Collection: Faith
There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.Collection: Love
A jester, a bad character.Collection: Character
The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.Collection: Christian
We never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.Collection: Evil
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.Collection: Art
All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room.Collection: Inability
All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theater. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love.Collection: Love
Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.Collection: Truth
Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.Collection: Loneliness
Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. He does not wish that he should be told the truth, he shuns saying it to others; and all these moods, so inconsistent with justice and reason, have their roots in his heart.Collection: Heart