If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

We came into a broken world. And we’re the cleanup crew.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

Time itself comes in drops.

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

If I was just a fan of music, I would think that I was the number one artist in the world.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

I am the freest author in the world.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.

I tell you the groans of the damned in hell are the deep bass of the universal anthem of praise that shall ascend to the throne of my God for ever and ever.

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

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

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

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

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.