Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

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

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

God can cause opportunity to find you. He has unexpected blessings where you suddenly meet the right person, or suddenly your health improves, or suddenly you’re able to pay off your house. That’s God shifting things in your favor.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born.

Character is destiny.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

Every man is his own hell.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

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?

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

I look at where I’m at today and realize that most of my success is owed to the mentors that was in my life.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

Nothing can come of nothing.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

To be is to do.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.