Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

Life is anything but predictable.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

The truth is lived, not taught.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Religions get lost as people do.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I’ve done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

If a whole bunch of people want to make your life a living hell, they’re gonna do it.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

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.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

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

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

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.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.