Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

I actually don’t want a throne at all, because I don’t view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.

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

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

If you would judge, understand.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Nature abhors annihilation.

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

I look after people.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

By indignities men come to dignities.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

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

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.