BLAISE PASCAL

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

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

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

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.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

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.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

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.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Vanity is but the surface.

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.