Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

The ultimate connection is when you are connected to the creator of the universe.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

God sent me on earth. He send me to do something, and nobody can stop me. If God want to stop me, then I stop. Man never can.

I answer only to God.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

He chose to honor us with His priesthood. So we honor Him by honoring His priesthood – both its power and those who bear it.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

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.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

If some people have the belief or view that the Dalai Lama has some miracle power, that’s totally nonsense.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

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

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Oh, this base heart of ours! Hath it not enough tinder in it to set on fire the course of nature? If a spark do but fall into it, any one of our members left to itself would dishonour Christ, deny the Lord that bought us, and turn back into perdition.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

Life is wasted on the living.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

In Buddhist culture, offering food to the monk symbolizes the action of goodness, and if you have no opportunity to support the practice of spirituality, then you are somehow left in the realm of darkness.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

God to me is love.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

As for our great King, when we venture into His presence, let us have a purpose there. Let us beware of playing at praying; it is insolence toward God.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.