Blaise Pascal

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

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

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

"Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"We run carelessly to the precipice after putting something before our eyes to stop us seeing it."

"The only true virtue is knowing oneself."

"I would prefer an interesting vice to an indifferent virtue."

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

"Justice without strength is powerless; strength without justice is tyranny."

"The heart hath its own memory."

"Curiosity is the lust of the mind."

"Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak well of yourself."

"The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he finds in men. Ordinary people find no difference in men."

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

"Everything is obscure to those who lack understanding."

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

"Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons."

"How hollow and exhausted everything is when one examines it closely."

"The heart wants what it wants."

"The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his ordinary doings."

"There is nothing so beautiful as beauty itself."

"Fear is the passion least accompanying a love of life."

"The infinitely great and the infinitely small; both escape us."

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

"Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late."

"Work is the greatest remedy for all ills."

"Truth is so obscured nowadays, and lies are so well established, that unless we love the truth, we shall never find it."

"Diversion is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, yet it is also the greatest of our miseries."