Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

We cannot learn men from books.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

The truth is, I have absolutely no professional credentials – literally, which is why I’m teaching at MIT.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.

Every time I say something that’s extremely truthful out loud, it literally breaks the Internet.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one’s own town.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

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.

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

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

The lie is a condition of life.

Our best thoughts come from others.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

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

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.