Blaise Pascal

“Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.”

“The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.”

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”

“Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.”

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

“Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.”

“The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.”

“Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illus...”

“You always admire what you really don't understand.”

“The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.”

“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 caut...”

“Little things console us because little things afflict us.”

“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 physic...”

“We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.”

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

“Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as pla...”

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

“Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.”

“It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.”

“Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.”