Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

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.

Nature abhors annihilation.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

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

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

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 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.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

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.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Real living is living for others.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

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

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

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.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

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.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

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.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.