No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

Silence is the mother of truth.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

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.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

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.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

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

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.