The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

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

I’m 31 now. I think I’m beginning to understand what life is, what romance is, and what a relationship means.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

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.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

Everything isn’t political.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

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.

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

If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Being is the great explainer.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

No one but a fool is always right.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.