Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

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

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.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

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

I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

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

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

I did study religion for a little while. I studied the Torah and the Holy Koran, Helios Biblos, which is considered by most people to be the Holy Bible. I just wanted to know, even with Buddhism and the Dalai Llama.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Life is wasted on the living.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

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

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

And yet it moves.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

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

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

In Buddhist culture, offering food to the monk symbolizes the action of goodness, and if you have no opportunity to support the practice of spirituality, then you are somehow left in the realm of darkness.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

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.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

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.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.