It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Silence is the mother of truth.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

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.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

If you’re going to wake up early all the time, and you’re working hard, and you’re working out, sometimes you’re going to get tired. It’s OK. It’s acceptable – somewhat. We’re all human, unfortunately.

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

Don’t join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

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

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can – that is their secret.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

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.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

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

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

Truth is what works.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

To live is to think.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

Real living is living for others.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.