Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

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

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.

I believe that when you think of the negative, and you get up discouraged – ‚There’s nothing good in my future‘ – I really believe it almost ties the hands of God. God works where there’s an attitude of faith. I believe faith is all about hope.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we’re doing.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

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

I look forward to death with great anticipation, to meeting God face to face.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

God is so big. It’s a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we’re small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

When Jesus comes to live in our hearts, the seed of holiness is planted.

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

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

The Bible says that God has a reason for keeping us here; if He didn’t, He would take us to Heaven far sooner.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher,‘ ‚Prophet,‘ ‚Really nice guy’… this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you’re left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nut case. You have to make a choice on that.

People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

My faith helps me understand that circumstances don’t dictate my happiness, my inner peace.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

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.

I never fall in love.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

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

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

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

We moralize among ruins.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Time stays, we go.

I’m trying to throw a big broad net to try to get people interested in God and believe that He’s for them and has a purpose.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

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

All I know is that, thanks to a sort of habit which has always been ingrained in me, I have never, at any moment of my life, experienced the least difficulty in addressing myself to God as to a supreme Someone.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.