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

Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.

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

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

I’ve learned never to say never.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

You can never get enough of what you don’t want.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out. Don’t get startled; don’t get frustrated. If you can say the word ‚good,‘ guess what? It means you’re still alive. It means you’re still breathing.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him.

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

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

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?

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

Fear is the mother of morality.

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.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.