All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Education is the best provision for old age.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

Youth is wasted on the young.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

Experience is the teacher of all things.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

I think there’s more women that watch me than men, but I don’t look at myself as just a minister to women. My ministry began that way, but I really feel like the Word of God is for everybody.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.