It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

I’m comfortable in my own skin, no matter how far it’s stretched. Ha ha.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

If humans were totally unstructured creatures, they would be… a tool which can properly be shaped by outside forces.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

Each one prays to God according to his own light.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil’s propagation.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

I am a Christian, and the Bible teaches me to forgive.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

Man is a universe within himself.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

The post of honour is a private station.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

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

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.

I’m half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I’d be in a hell of a mess!

If God can’t get you to obey Him concerning your money, he won’t get to anything else you got.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

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.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word – prayer. Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

I love making people laugh. And I love laughing.

I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.

Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.