All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

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

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

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 went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Reality is a sliding door.

I was terrible in English. I couldn’t stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention – it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

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

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

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.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Seeing is not always believing.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

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

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

Science is but an image of the truth.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

I’m living a dream I never want to wake up from.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‚easy listening,‘ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

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

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.