Quotes from Blaise Pascal


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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.


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.


You always admire what you really don't understand.


Men blaspheme what they do not know.


It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.


Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.


Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.


Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.


Imagination decides everything.


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


The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.


Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.


Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.


The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.


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.


Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.


The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.


Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.


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


Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.