Life is wasted on the living.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

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

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

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

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

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.

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

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

I think Bible principles are principles for life.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

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

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

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?

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.