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?

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

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?

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

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

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Go on thinking that you don’t need to be read and you’ll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won’t feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be – protect themselves. That’s why you have state secret laws. Citizens are not supposed to know what their government is doing to them.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

Such as we are made of, such we be.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Reality is a sliding door.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

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

I don’t want to write an autobiography because I would become public property with no privacy left.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.