Hell is other people.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

When you give, it comes back to you.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

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 is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

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

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

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

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

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.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

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

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.