Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.

We moralize among ruins.

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Meditation is a great way to keep my body well-centered while juggling shooting schedules and recording sessions.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

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.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: ‚Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.‘

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Love is a state of being.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

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

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

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

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

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

I would fain grow old learning many things.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

I happen to believe there is evil in the world.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

It’s easy to forget who you are.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

He who does not trust enough, Will not be trusted.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.