It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

Life is a journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

An unused life is an early death.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

If you lose a big fight, it will worry you all of your life. It will plague you – until you get your revenge.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Philosophy is the highest music.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

The only answer to fear is faith in God, knowing He loves you unconditionally and individually.

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?

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

I think I have a big fear of things spiraling out of control. Out of control and dangerous and reckless and thoughtless scares me, because people get hurt.

Youth is wasted on the young.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Theology is unnecessary.