Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Common sense is not so common.

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

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

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

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

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.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

What one fool can understand, another can.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

The worst men often give the best advice.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.