In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.