Blaise Pascal

Bekannte Zitate von Blaise Pascal

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.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Men often take their imagination for their heart and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

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

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.

We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.

Faith is different from proof the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

Imagination disposes of everything it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

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

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

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

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.

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 greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see it is above, not against them.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

Imagination decides everything.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

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.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.

There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.