A good portrait can only be made by reconciling all our contradictory features, and it is not enough to follow through a series of mutually compatible qualities without reconciling their opposites; to understand an author’s meaning all contradictory passages must be reconciled.

— Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal Quotes

Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.

— Blaise Pascal

Weaklings are those who know the truth, but maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so, and apart from that forsake it.

— Blaise Pascal

No one has ever incurred martyrdom for miracles he claims to have seen; for, in the case of those which the Turks believe by tradition, human folly might go as far as martyrdom, but not for those actually seen.

— Blaise Pascal

The church has had as much difficulty in proving that Jesus was man, against those who denied it, as in proving that he was God, and both were equally evident.

— Blaise Pascal

This is not the home of truth; it wanders unrecognized among men.

— Blaise Pascal

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars.

— Blaise Pascal

Any man can do what Mahomet did. For he preformed miracles and was not foretold. No man can do what Christ did.

— Blaise Pascal

We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard.

— Blaise Pascal

A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us.

— Blaise Pascal

Love or hate alters the face of justice.

— Blaise Pascal

One must know when it is right to doubt, to affirm, to submit. Anyone who does otherwise does not understand the force of reason. Some men run counter to these three principles, either affirming that everything can be proved, because they know nothing about proof, or doubting everything, because they do not know when to submit, or always submitting, because they do not know when judgment is called for.

— Blaise Pascal

Two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.

— Blaise Pascal

There is no better proof of human vanity than to consider the causes and effects of love, because the whole universe can be changed by it.

— Blaise Pascal

Imagination decides everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the world’s supreme good.

— Blaise Pascal

The ordinary life of men is like that of saints. They all seek satisfaction, and differ only according to the object in which they locate it.

— Blaise Pascal

Our own interest is another wonderful instrument for blinding us agreeably.

— Blaise Pascal

Ambiguity goes just so far and no further.

— Blaise Pascal

Things have various qualities and the soul various tendencies, for nothing presented to the soul is simple, and the soul never applies itself simply to any subject. That is why the same thing makes us laugh and cry.

— Blaise Pascal

We are so unhappy that we can only enjoy something which we should be annoyed to see go wrong, and that can and does constantly happen to thousands of things. Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point. It is perpetual motion.

— Blaise Pascal

One must know oneself. Even if that does not help in finding truth, at least it helps in running one’s life, and nothing is more proper.

— Blaise Pascal
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