Quotes from Blaise Pascal

Description of man. Dependence, desire for independence, needs.

For I should like to know by what right this animal, which recognizes his own weakness, measures God's mercy and keeps it within limits suggested by his own fancies.

Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it. By telling himself so often enough he convinces himself, because when he is alone he carries on an inner dialogue with himself which it is important to keep under proper control. Evil communications corrupt good manners.1 We must keep silence as far as we can and only talk to ourselves about God, whom we know to be true, and thus convince ourselves that he is.

There is some pleasure in being on board a ship battered by storms when one is certain of not perishing. The persecutions buffeting the Church are like this.

Ci Puo' essere quakcosa di piu' stupido del fatto che un uomo abbia il diritto di uccidermi perche' vive sull'altra sponda di un fiume e il suo sovrano ha avuto una lite con il mio, anche se io non ho litigato con lui?

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

That is why those to whom God has given religious faith by moving their hearts are very fortunate, and feel quite legitimately convinced, but to those who do not have it we can only give such faith through reasoning, until God gives it by moving their heart, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.

What kind of man had the Messiah to be, since through him the sceptre was to remain for ever in Judah, but at his coming the sceptre was to be removed from Judah? To ensure that seeing they should not see and hearing they should not hear

This is how the whole of our life slips by. We seek repose by battling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome we find rest is unbearable because of the boredom it generates. ... We can't imaging a condition that is pleasant without fun and noise.

is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills. All your light can only reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or good.

What is wonderful, incomparable and wholly divine is that this religion which has always survived has always been under attack.

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

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction.

Let it not be said that I have said nothing new. The arrangement of the material is new.

VÅ¡etky problémy ?udstva pramenia z neschopnosti ?loveka sedieÃ…Â¥ v miestnosti ticho a sám.

Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the other.

all of man's problems come from the inability to sit quietly in a room.

Si no actúas como piensas, vas a terminar pensando como actúas.

When the word of God, which is true, is false in the letter it is true in the spirit. Sit thou at my right hand is false literally, so it is true spiritually.

Christianity is strange: it requires human beings to recognize that they are vile and even abominable.

The heart has its reasons which reason knoweth not.

all humanity's problems stem from an inability to sit in a quiet room alone." Johnson, Fenton. At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life (p. 229). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Kind words do not cost much, yet they accomplish much.

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