All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Knowledge is power.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

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.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

Knowing that we are primates, I think, is a fascinating discovery, and a very interesting and rather cheering one.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

We should play free football, defend lively with a passion, and have the best understanding in offence.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

He who hath many friends hath none.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

Listen with your eyes for feelings.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

I used to read five psalms every day – that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

The last suit that you wear, you don’t need any pockets.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

I believe that Jesus realized his oneness with God and he showed, what he attempted to do was show the way to all of us, how to realize our own onenes with God also, so he’s a precursor.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.