Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ; We do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ.
– Blaise Pascal
Jesus
Human things must be known to be loved; but Divine things must be loved to be known.
– Blaise Pascal
Love
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.
– Blaise Pascal
Faith | Light
All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.
– Blaise Pascal
Life | Prayer
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
– Blaise Pascal
Truth | The Heart
We are within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.
– Blaise Pascal
Life
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
– Blaise Pascal
Change | Grief | Healing
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.
– Blaise Pascal
God | The Heart
God is none other than the Savior of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities… Those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified Him, but have glorified themselves.
– Blaise Pascal
Self-righteousness
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
– Blaise Pascal
Truth
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him alright.
– Blaise Pascal
Truth | Trust | Providence
It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
– Blaise Pascal
Happiness | Freedom
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
– Blaise Pascal
Sin | Righteousness | Men
If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.
– Blaise Pascal
Happiness
The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.
– Blaise Pascal
Meditation
Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
– Blaise Pascal
Apathy | Business | Rest
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
– Blaise Pascal
Religion | Hatred
Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
– Blaise Pascal
Atheism
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
– Blaise Pascal
Philosophy | Nature
There is nothing so abominable in the eyes of God and of men as idolatry, whereby men render to the creature that honor which is due only to the Creator
– Blaise Pascal
Idolatry
Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.
– Blaise Pascal
Love
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.
– Blaise Pascal
Kindness
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
– Blaise Pascal
Truth
Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.
– Blaise Pascal
Happiness
All men have happiness as their object: there are no exceptions. However different the means they employ, they aim at the same end.
– Blaise Pascal
Happiness | Men
It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.
– Blaise Pascal
Philosophy | Victory
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
– Blaise Pascal
Truth | Rest
The past and present are only our means; the future is always our end. Thus we never really live, but only hope to live.
– Blaise Pascal
Life | The Future
Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
– Blaise Pascal
Faith | Truth
Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.
– Blaise Pascal
God | Thankfulness
I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
– Blaise Pascal
Friendship | Gossip
It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.
– Blaise Pascal
Miracles
Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
– Blaise Pascal
Morality | Knowledge | Affliction
There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.
– Blaise Pascal
Happiness | God
Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
– Blaise Pascal
Kindness
We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.
– Blaise Pascal
Apathy
Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
– Blaise Pascal
Habits
Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.
– Blaise Pascal
Justice
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.
– Blaise Pascal
Pride
The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
– Blaise Pascal
Love | God | Knowledge
Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride, and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.
– Blaise Pascal
Humility
Lust and force are the source of all our actions; lust causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
– Blaise Pascal
Lust
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
– Blaise Pascal
Habits | The Future
We never love a person, but only qualities.
– Blaise Pascal
Love
If man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?
– Blaise Pascal
Happiness
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 theatre.
– Blaise Pascal
Carnality
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
– Blaise Pascal
Justice | Power
It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.
– Blaise Pascal
Salvation
The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
– Blaise Pascal
Salvation | The Gospel
The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
– Blaise Pascal
Pride
It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
– Blaise Pascal
God | Theology
Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful.
– Blaise Pascal
Criticism
Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.
– Blaise Pascal
Character
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
– Blaise Pascal
Humility
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | The Heart
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.
– Blaise Pascal
Apathy
Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
– Blaise Pascal
Conversion | The Heart | Men
Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
– Blaise Pascal
Love
Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | Time
Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
– Blaise Pascal
Faith
Men blaspheme what they do not know.
– Blaise Pascal
Ignorance | Men
If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
– Blaise Pascal
Pride
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
– Blaise Pascal
Faith | The Heart
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.
– Blaise Pascal
Praise | Reading
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
– Blaise Pascal
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.
– Blaise Pascal
Friendship | Gossip
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
– Blaise Pascal
Truth
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
– Blaise Pascal
Life | Men
There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.
– Blaise Pascal
Holiness | The Heart
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | The Future
We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
– Blaise Pascal
Hypocrisy
Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.
– Blaise Pascal
Life
Let it not be imagined that the life of a good Christian must be a life of melancholy and gloominess; for he only resigns some pleasures to enjoy others infinitely better.
– Blaise Pascal
Christians
Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.
– Blaise Pascal
Habits | Men
The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.
– Blaise Pascal
Justice
Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | Foolishness
Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.
– Blaise Pascal
Death | Rest
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
– Blaise Pascal
Suffering
To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
– Blaise Pascal
Philosophy
The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
– Blaise Pascal
Apathy
Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
– Blaise Pascal
Kindness
Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
– Blaise Pascal
Life
We are so little and vain that the esteem of five or six persons about us is enough to content and amuse us.
– Blaise Pascal
Apathy
The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
– Blaise Pascal
Apathy
The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.
– Blaise Pascal
God
We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
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.
– Blaise Pascal
Good and Evil
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
– Blaise Pascal
Justice
If a soldier or labourer complains of the hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.
– Blaise Pascal
Contentment
Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
– Blaise Pascal
Happiness
One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
– Blaise Pascal
Truth
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.
– Blaise Pascal
Habits
The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
– Blaise Pascal
Philosophy
We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | The Heart