Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

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

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

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.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

Hell is other people.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.