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.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

I’m not good at talking about myself.

There is no sin except stupidity.

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.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

Mindfulness practices enhance the connection between our body, our mind and everything else that is around us. Mindful living is the key to understanding our struggles with weight and to empowering us to control our weight.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

The fewer the words, the better the prayer.

If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. It means to think of something over and over.

I’ve got a terrible memory; it’s probably because I’m always concentrating on what I’m doing now.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

Today, the news is scandals; that is news, but the many children who don’t have food – that’s not news. This is grave. We can’t rest easy while things are this way.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

The brain is wider than the sky.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

No one but a fool is always right.

I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

The best part about being in your thirties is you know what works for you.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Simplify, simplify.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.