The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

The mere brute pleasure of reading the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

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

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

The cautious seldom err.

To be is to do.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

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

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.