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.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

I’m here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn’t make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

Life well spent is long.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

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.

Life’s a rollercoaster. You’re up one minute; you’re down one minute. But who doesn’t like rollercoasters?

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

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.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I’m concerned, that part is Greg’s for life. I’ve had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I’ve always refused.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

When you give, it comes back to you.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

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.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I’ve got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I’ve done it.

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Writers are always writing about infidelity. It’s so dramatic. The wickedness of it, the secrecy, the complications, the finding that you thought you were one person but you’re also this other person. The innocent life and the guilty life. My God, it’s just full of stuff for a writer. I doubt it will ever go out of fashion.

Death is a fearful thing.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.