I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

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

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

I’ve never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

I have wasted my hours.

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.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

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

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

We can take a ‚It was hard to get there.‘ But we ain’t taking no loss. We’re going to win.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

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.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

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.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

If you’re in a workplace you don’t like right now, be encouraged because God will use it for your good. Think about it this way: He wants you to be a light in the darkness – and He’s putting His confidence in you!

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break 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.

I want to appeal to everyone. Because I’m not saying I’m the best, but we the best.

If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

We were poor, but we smiled.

Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

I’m a can-do girl.

At 155, I will be the same animal, an even better animal.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

Face your fears and doubts, and new worlds will open to you.

You’re not a product of your nature. That is your genetic makeup or your nurture, the things that have happened to you. Of course those things affect you powerfully, but they do not determine you.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

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.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.