The good is the beautiful.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

Theology is unnecessary.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

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.

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

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.

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.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Blushing is the color of virtue.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.