The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

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

Life is wasted on the living.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

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

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

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.

God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.

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

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

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

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

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

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.

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.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

And yet it moves.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

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

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent.