Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

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 now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

Behold, at this hour our moral history is being preserved for eternity. Processes are at work which will perpetuate our every act and word and thought.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

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.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

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

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

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

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Silence is the mother of truth.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

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

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Being is the great explainer.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.