Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

I don’t think I ever thought of myself as Superman. But there were people who thought of me that way, and maybe I believed them a little.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

What one fool can understand, another can.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

I don’t really care how the Patriots are perceived, truthfully. I really don’t. I really don’t. Look, if you’re a fan of our team, you root for us, you believe in our team, and you believe in what we’re trying to accomplish. If you’re not a fan of us, you have a different opinion.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you’re young, you can’t play enough.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

Only God who made us can touch us and change us and save us from ourselves.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

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

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

If you believe in prayer at all, expect God to hear you. If you do not expect, you will not have. God will not hear you unless you believe He will hear you; but if you believe He will, He will be as good as your faith.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

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.

I have to be seen to be believed.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

Our faith is faith in someone else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Things do not change; we change.

The gods‘ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.