Quotes from Blaise Pascal

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.

What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe.

Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.

Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other.

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.

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

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?

Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.

Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.

Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference...

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.

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

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.

The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

La dernière chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la première. ( The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first .)

By space the universe encompasses me and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

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.

Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything.

Since we cannot know all there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

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.