Blaise Pascal
There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary dispositionCollection: Light
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.Collection: Christian
The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.Collection: Lasts
All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.Collection: Blessing
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.Collection: Math
Nothing is good but mediocrity. The majority has settled that, and finds fault with him who escapes it at whichever end... To leave the mean is to abandon humanity.Collection: Mean
By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.Collection: Space
Man is so great that his greatness appears even in the consciousness of his misery. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way, all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.Collection: Greatness
The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.Collection: Titles
[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.Collection: Beauty
Put the world's greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be; if there is a precipe below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail.Collection: Imagination
Le silence est la plus grande perse cution: jamais les saints ne se sont tus. Silence is the greatest of all persecutions: no saint was ever silent.Collection: Silence
Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.Collection: Humble
L'on a beau se cacher a' soi-me" me, l'on aime toujours. We vainly conceal from ourselves the fact that we are always in love.Collection: Facts
Do little things as if they were great, because of the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ who dwells in thee.Collection: Jesus
Continuity in everything is unpleasant.Collection: Change
Our natures lie in motion, without which we die.Collection: Change
By thought I embrace the universe.Collection: Embrace
Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind.Collection: Ancient
Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.Collection: Common
Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.Collection: Travel
Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first.Collection: Nature
Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.Collection: Men
Amusement that is excessive and followed only for its own sake, allures and deceives us.Collection: Amusement
We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.Collection: Memorial Day
Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair.Collection: Jesus
What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial.Collection: Blood
The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.Collection: Thinking
All is one, all is different. How many natures exist in man? How many vocations? And by what chance does each man ordinarily choose what he has heard praised?Collection: Men
Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless.Collection: Writing
We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.Collection: Talking
The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.Collection: Art
Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.Collection: Beautiful
Eloquence is a way of saying things in such a way, first, that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure, and second, that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Time
What amazes me most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness.Collection: Weakness
It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.Collection: Reading
Good deeds, when concealed, are the most admirable.Collection: Deeds
When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.Collection: Pain
For nature is an image of Grace, and visible miracles are images of the invisible.Collection: Nature
Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.Collection: Use
To understand is to forgive.Collection: Forgiveness
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.Collection: Men
What reason have atheists for saying that we cannot rise again? That what has never been, should be, or that what has been, should be again? Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it.Collection: Easter
You corrupt religion either in favour of your friends, or against your enemies.Collection: Enemy
Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.Collection: Speak
We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.Collection: Truth
The war existing between the senses and reason.Collection: War