The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war – for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I’d say we deserve ours more.

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

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

I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

It is natural to die as to be born.

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

It could be – and it has been argued, in my view rather plausibly, though neuroscientists don’t like it – that neuroscience for the last couple hundred years has been on the wrong track.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.

If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

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.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.

No sane man will dance.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.

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.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

A man makes you feel important – makes you glad you are a woman.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Man is by nature a political animal.

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.

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

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

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

Men exist for the sake of one another.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

We are Divine enough to ask and we are important enough to receive.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.