How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

The thing about delirium is you think it’s great, but it actually isn’t.

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

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

Men must know their limitations.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

Seeing is not always believing.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

Humans have a knack for choosing precisely the things that are worst for them.

I get naturally uncomfortable when I’m put under a magnifying glass.