If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

The darkness, the loop of negative thoughts on repeat, clamours and interferes with the music I hear in my head.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

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 cautious.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of the two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

God is speaking to us. But are we listening to Him? When our conscience begins to nudge us for whatever reason, we might have this low-level misery or uneasiness about whatever it is we’ve done or we’re about to do. At times like this, it’s wise to prayerfully consider whether we’re offending God with our actions.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

Some people can just let things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or makes me sad.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Nature is not human hearted.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along with. When our heart is prideful, we don’t give God the credit and we mistreat people, looking down on them and thinking we deserve what we have.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

We all have done something unethical.

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.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

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

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.