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

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

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

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

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

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

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

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

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

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

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.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

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

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.