Authors / Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal quotes

1623–1662 · French mathematician and religious thinker

Pascal built a calculating machine at nineteen and spent his last years writing notes for a defence of Christianity, published as the Pensées. We quote W. F. Trotter's translation.

4 real · 0 not theirs

Really theirs

4 quotes traced to Blaise Pascal's own work or a reliable witness.

Sourced

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Source: Pensées 277, tr. W. F. Trotter

Sourced

All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Source: Pensées 139, tr. W. F. Trotter

Sourced

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

Source: Pensées 347, tr. W. F. Trotter

Sourced

I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.

The line usually credited to Mark Twain.

Source: Provincial Letters, Letter 16 (1657)