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

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Forever is composed of nows.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

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.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

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

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

Religions get lost as people do.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

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

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

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

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

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

Man is a universe within himself.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

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

There’s this lingering philosophy that movie stars shouldn’t do TV.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

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.‘

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

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

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.