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

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

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

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Reality is a sliding door.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

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.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Time stays, we go.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

I tell people, and it’s the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won’t make me a car. And you can sit in church till your bottom is flat and that won’t make you a servant of Christ.

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

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.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

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

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

No man was ever wise by chance.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

What we live by we die by.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

A lie cannot live.

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

A useless life is an early death.