It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

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

Nothing can come of nothing.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

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

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

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

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s mountains.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The environment is everything that isn’t me.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘