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

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

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.

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

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

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.

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

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

You can be rich in spirit, kindness, love and all those things that you can’t put a dollar sign on.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

An unused life is an early death.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

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

Freedom without limits is just a word.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

History should be written as philosophy.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

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

People must have righteous principals in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

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

Life, if well lived, is long enough.

Philosophy is the highest music.

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

Politics have no relation to morals.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air we wawl and cry. When we are born we cry, that we are come to this great state of fools.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

My mother would kill me if I posed nude! My mother raised me with certain standards.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.