The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

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

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.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

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.

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

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

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

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

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

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

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

The only shame is to have none.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know – not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that’s kind of different from the information you put in your profile.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

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

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.