Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Quotes

• I have made this letter long because i have not the time to make it shorter.

• The Knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.

• I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

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

• We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.

• The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.

• I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.

• The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing.

• Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

• To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.

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

• I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

• Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

• Man's nature is not always to advance; it has its advances and retreats.

• The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

• I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.