The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

My life is a struggle.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

When you’re young, you keep reading new writers and you keep changing your mind about how you ought to sound.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

My life has been very full.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

All the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

I know that campaigns can seem small, and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you’re sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me – so am I.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.

Tomorrow morning before we depart, I intend to land and see what can be found in the neighborhood.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

People want to go out and travel around and meet cool people. I could just go live in Vermont, but is that what I really want?

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.