I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

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

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

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.

I know how to swim through backlash. I can tread water through backlash… If anything, that’s all giving me power.

No man was ever wise by chance.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

Even as a child, Muhammad Ali got perverse pleasure out of being different. He liked the attention it got him, but most of all he just liked being himself: odd and independent.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

The truth is lived, not taught.

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

The U.S. military is not war weary. Our military draws strength from confronting our enemies when clear policy objectives are set and we are fully resourced for the fight.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Serious illness doesn’t bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

Being a kid’s not easy. You’re transforming and becoming a human being. At some point, you have everyone taking care of you, and then, all of a sudden, you’re out in the world.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

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.

Character is destiny.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.