All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

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

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

If you wished to be loved, love.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

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.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

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.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

Science is but an image of the truth.

When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.