All men by nature desire knowledge.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

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.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

I’m definitely a Polaroid camera girl. For me, what I’m really excited about is bringing back the artistry and the nature of Polaroid.

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

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.‘

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

Our life is made by the death of others.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.