No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

The word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

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

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

I have wondered about time all my life.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

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.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

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

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

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

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

It’s okay to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

I happen to believe there is evil in the world.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

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

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Silence is the mother of truth.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.