No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

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.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

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

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

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

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

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

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air we wawl and cry. When we are born we cry, that we are come to this great state of fools.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

There’s not much time to unwind, but you know what, it’s because I love what I do. I look forward to the season. I look forward to playing games. It doesn’t ever feel like work.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

An unused life is an early death.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

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.

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

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.