Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn’t take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.

No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

I have rooms full of little dongly things and don’t want any more. Half the little dongly things I’ve got, I don’t even know what gizmo they’re for. More importantly, half the gizmos I’ve got, I don’t know where their little dongly thing is.

In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Every day is a major balancing act that I have to figure out and coordinate.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

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

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Silence is the mother of truth.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.