The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

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

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Fear is the mother of morality.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

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

I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world – a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.