Blaise Pascal

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

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 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.

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

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

If our condition were truly happy, we would not need diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves happy.

Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched; but it is being great to know that one is wretched.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

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

Imagination decides everything.

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?

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.

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.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

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

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.

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.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.