Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

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

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

My philosophy is simple: It’s a down-home, common, horse-sense approach to things.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

The art is long, life is short.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Sometimes I lose my temper.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

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

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

The brain is wider than the sky.

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

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Our life is made by the death of others.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

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

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.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

All men are equal before fish.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.