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

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

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

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Life is wasted on the living.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

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

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Real living is living for others.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

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

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.