Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

I try not to go around looking like a hag.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of the agreement signed on Good Friday 1998, paving the way for Northern Ireland to become the exciting and inspirational place that it is today.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

Evil is whatever distracts.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

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.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

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

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

You’re beautiful, like a May fly.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

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

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

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

God doesn’t love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

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.

If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

History should be written as philosophy.