Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

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

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

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

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

Life is just one damned thing after another.

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

Character is destiny.

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.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

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.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

This is not a bad life.

When I die, I’m gonna leave my body to science fiction.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

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.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

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.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.

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?