Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

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

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected.

I was definitely very much a country boy.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

I’m crepuscular.

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

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

Let us remember we are all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order, and the right of peaceful protest.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

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

Who does not desire such a victory by which we shall join places in our Kingdom, so far divided by nature, and for which we shall set up trophies in another conquered world?

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.

I think the perfection of love is that it’s not perfect.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

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

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.