Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

The lie is a condition of life.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

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

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

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.

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

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

I think, often, people who run away are people who got into things most enthusiastically, and then they want more. They just demand more of life than what is happening in the moment. Sometimes this is a great mistake, as it’s always a good deal different than you expect it.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

Men exist for the sake of one another.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

Time stays, we go.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

In war, you win or lose, live or die – and the difference is just an eyelash.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

All the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Life in abundance comes only through great love.

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

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.