Blaise Pascal Quotations | Page 3

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.

Reflect on death as in Jesus Christ, not as without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is dreadful, it is alarming, it is the terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of saints.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart.

[I feel] engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.

Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God

St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

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.

The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.

No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.

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.

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.

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!

We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.

Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you.

Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.

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.

We can only know God well when we know our own sin. And those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified Him but have glorified themselves.

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.

[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.

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.

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.

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 gospel to me is simply irresistible.

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

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.

When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.

Continuous eloquence wearies.

If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Il n'y a que deux sortes d'hommes: les uns justes, qui se croient pe cheurs; les autres pe cheurs, qui se croient justes. There are only two types of people: the virtuous who believe themselves to be sinners and the sinners who believe themselves to be virtuous.

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.

We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and naturally loves itself; and it gives itself to one or the other, and hardens itself against one or the other, as it chooses...it is the heart that feels God, not the reason; this is faith.

God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind...

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.

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.

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

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.

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.

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. [So] you must wager. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that he is.

It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.

There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition

There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.

We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.

Habit is the second nature which destroys the first.

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

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

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

It is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, [if we were to show them our proofs of the existence of God] nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt. . . .

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

Do little things as if they were great, because of the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ who dwells in thee.

Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.

Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.

To go beyond the bounds of moderation is to outrage humanity.

The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

Those who are clever in imagination are far more pleased with themselves than prudent men could reasonably be.

Il est non seulement impossible, mais inutile de conna|"tre Dieu sans Je sus-Christ. It is not only impossible, but also useless to recognize God without Jesus.

The property of power is to protect.

There is a God-shaped hole in the life of every man ...

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

The stream is always purer at its source. [Fr., Les choses valent toujours mieux dans leur source.]

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

Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.

Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.

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

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

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.

There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.

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.

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.

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.

All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.

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.

It is much better to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing.

It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

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

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

Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.

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

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

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.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

Imagination decides everything.

The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.

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

Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God.

Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.

To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.

The law required what it could not give. Grace gives that which it requires.

To understand is to forgive.