The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

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.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

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

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

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

Time stays, we go.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‚easy listening,‘ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.

I’m not concerned with people seeing me in a certain way. Some people see me as a kid, some people see me as an adult. But I’m seriously not going to complain how anybody sees me, as long as they see me.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Myths can’t be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Man is a universe within himself.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

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.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

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

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

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

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

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

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.