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

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

The Tao teaches us not to intervene and interfere. The things we love we have to learn to leave alone. And the people we love we have to learn to let them be.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

To live is to think.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Time stays, we go.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

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

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

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

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

You just have to have a simple faith.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.