The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

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

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

Real living is living for others.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

My wife and I don’t compete. We know each other’s preferences, and we work to provide those for each other. One will take over when the other is faced with something he or she dislikes. That’s what friends do.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

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

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

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

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

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.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

Death is the king of this world: ‚Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

If you would judge, understand.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

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.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

Nature abhors annihilation.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.