In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

There is no unique picture of reality.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

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

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

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

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

If merely ‚feeling good‘ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

I always have an optimistic view, no matter what it is.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

If a whole bunch of people want to make your life a living hell, they’re gonna do it.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.