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

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

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.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

I haven’t gone out of my way to seek advice from people I don’t know.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

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

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

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

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.