Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s mountains.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

Law is mind without reason.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we’re dreaming all the time. That’s what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.