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.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

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.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

The worst men often give the best advice.

The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

I consider wisdom supernatural because it isn’t taught by men – it’s a gift from God.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

Children make your life important.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

I think if we didn’t contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

Obedience to God is the pathway to the life you really want to live.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

Forever is composed of nows.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

A witty saying proves nothing.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

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

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.

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

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.