The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

The lie is a condition of life.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

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.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

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.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

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

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

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

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

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

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.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

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.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Conscience is a man’s compass.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Error is always more busy than truth.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Truth is a pathless land.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.