A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

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.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

I really have no interest in myself.

I feel you’re in charge of your own situation.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

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.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

I’m sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it’s applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you’re dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

I don’t think I get angry.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

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

It’s human nature to blame someone else for your shortcomings or upsets.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

I’m inconsistent, even to myself.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don’t know who or what, maybe myself.