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

I think if we didn’t contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

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.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

Error is always more busy than truth.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

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.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

There is nothing permanent except change.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

Sin is geographical.

I think and that is all that I am.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than 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.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one’s hopes in a pile of broken crockery.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

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.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.