If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.
— Blaise Pascal
That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.
The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.
Imagination decides everything.
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.
Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
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.
When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.
Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
Men blaspheme what they do not know.
The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.
Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
Law, without force, is impotent.
The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
Vanity is but the surface.
We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
You always admire what you really don't understand.
Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
