That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that’s odd, but I think it’s odd if artists aren’t interested in the world around them. I’m always chasing that.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

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.

The coniferous forests of the Yosemite Park, and of the Sierra in general, surpass all others of their kind in America, or indeed the world, not only in the size and beauty of the trees, but in the number of species assembled together, and the grandeur of the mountains they are growing on.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

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.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

A child miseducated is a child lost.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

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

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

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

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.