To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

Change alone is unchanging.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don’t.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

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

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

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.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

Lord keep us all from sin. Teach us how to walk circumspectly; enable us to guard our minds against error of doctrine, our hearts against wrong feelings, and our lives against evil actions.

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

Life is warfare.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

A fool is wise in his eyes.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

What one fool can understand, another can.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.