The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

He that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.

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.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

They are resilient children, but they are children, and as much as they need help to understand the hard truths in life, they also need what we all need – protection and love.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

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

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

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 misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

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

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

I used to read five psalms every day – that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.

The good is the beautiful.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.