Blaise Pascal

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

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

Love has no age as it is always renewing itself.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.

Who can doubt that we exist only to love? Disguise it, in fact, as we will, we love without intermission... We live not a moment exempt from its influence.

Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.

Look for the truth, it wants to be found.

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

Lord, help me to do great things as though they were little, since I do them with your power; And little things as though they were great, since I do them in your name!

We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.

A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.

I condemn equally those who choose to praise man, those who choose to condemn him and those who choose to divert themselves, and I can only approve of those who seek with groans.

There are two equally dangerous extremes-to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.

Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.

Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.

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