The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

I won’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

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.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Silence is the mother of truth.

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

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

Hell is other people.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

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

Life is better when people are working, happy, and spending money.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

The universe is transformation: life is opinion.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

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.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

I resigned from the Marine Corps and flying in 1974, even though I loved them both. I quit because I no longer wanted to fight for peace. Instead, I believe we can build a more sustainable peace by working for prosperity.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

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

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.