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I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.
-Blaise Pascal
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The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
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On vanity: The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.
-Blaise Pascal
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Admiration
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Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion.
-Blaise Pascal
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Art
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What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.
-Blaise Pascal
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Authors & Writing
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I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter.
-Blaise Pascal
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If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
-Blaise Pascal
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The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
-Blaise Pascal
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Beauty
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Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.
-Blaise Pascal
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Belief
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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.
-Blaise Pascal
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If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.
-Blaise Pascal
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Bible, The
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The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
-Blaise Pascal
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Boredom
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Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.
-Blaise Pascal
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Choice
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The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
-Blaise Pascal
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Christianity
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Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
-Blaise Pascal
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Conflict
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We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
-Blaise Pascal
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The war existing between the senses and reason.
-Blaise Pascal
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Conscience
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Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.
-Blaise Pascal
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Contentment
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On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room. A man wealthy enough for life's needs would never leave home to go to sea or beseige some fortress if he knew how to stay at home and enjoy it...
-Blaise Pascal, Pense
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Contradiction
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Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
-Blaise Pascal
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Death
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The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever.
-Blaise Pascal, Pensees
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Deception/Lying
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We like to be deceived.
-Blaise Pascal
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Desires
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Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
-Blaise Pascal
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Discovery
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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.
-Blaise Pascal
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Effort
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The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
-Blaise Pascal
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Books by and about Blaise Pascal