The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

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.

Little by little, not by making big promises, I need to be calmer, read more, spend more time with my loved ones, and be more mindful about nature and environment.

Words are loaded pistols.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we’re hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

One’s own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one’s Maker and no one else’s.

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

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

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

I’m actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender.

He who hath many friends hath none.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

Religion is just mind control.

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

If you wished to be loved, love.

There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

I answer only to God.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.