Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

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.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Character is destiny.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Faith is the complete reliance on the power and goodness of Spirit and the firm belief that you are always connected to this goodness. Always affirm your faith and not your doubt.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

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

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

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

To be is to do.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

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

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

I believe God gives you the grace to do what you need to do.

I don’t think I ever thought of myself as Superman. But there were people who thought of me that way, and maybe I believed them a little.

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.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

God doesn’t dwell in the wooden, stony or earthen idols. His abode is in our feelings, our thoughts.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

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.

God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

We must show our Christian colors if we are to be true to Jesus Christ.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.