Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

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

Science is nothing but perception.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Reality is a sliding door.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

There is no wealth but life.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

And yet it moves.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

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

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

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

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

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

I am two with nature.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

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

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Nature is wont to hide herself.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

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.