To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.

The ‚soul‘ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

I’m tired of fighting. I’ve always known that I can’t be an action star all my life.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

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

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

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.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

Real living is living for others.

Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of. Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden. And make no mistake about it, to strive to live completely in the present is to strive for what already is the case.

Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

And yet it moves.

To live is to think.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

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 better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

I think if we didn’t contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

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.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

We think too much and feel too little.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.