He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents – electric wave motion – will have the sway.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

We are wiser than we know.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

The earth laughs in flowers.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

Wise kings generally have wise counselors; and he must be a wise man himself who is capable of distinguishing one.

Freedom without limits is just a word.