Blaise Pascal

Why God has instituted Prayer:— To communicate to his creatures the dignity of causation.

Happiness can be found neither in ourselves nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.

There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.

they do not know that they seek only the chase and not the quarry.

Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.

There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.