It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

My life is real.

Older and wiser voices can help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

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.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Life is better when people are working, happy, and spending money.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

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

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

I love Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove – there is so much life and vitality around Portobello and Ladbroke Grove. It has come up a lot since I started Virgin more than 40 years ago, but there is so much character.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

My life has been very full.

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

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

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.