Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the bow and arrow.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Reality is a sliding door.

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.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

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.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we’re probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

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

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

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

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

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.

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

The object of the superior man is truth.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

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

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

It’s not that every single thing that happens on Facebook is gonna be good. This is humanity. People use tools for good and bad, but I think that we have a clear responsibility to make sure that the good is amplified and to do everything we can to mitigate the bad.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.