Quotes from Blaise Pascal

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

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?

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

Vanity is but the surface.

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

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

Man is neither angel nor beast.

In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.

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

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.

Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.

All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions.... This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.

If men knew themselves, God would heal and pardon them.

How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!

If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

Man governs himself more by impulse than reason

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.