Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

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

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

You don’t have to be scared of me, because I am loyal. Why are people so scared of creative ideas and so scared of truth? All I want to do is do good.

When you give, it comes back to you.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

When doubt comes against us, we have to lift up the shield of faith. We do this when we open our mouth and say what God’s Word says, rather than grumbling and complaining about the problem.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

What we live by we die by.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

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

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

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

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

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.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.