Sin is geographical.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

A jug fills drop by drop.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Forever is composed of nows.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

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

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?

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

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

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

By that sin fell the angels.

I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

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

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

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Nature abhors annihilation.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

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.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

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

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

History should be written as philosophy.

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.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.