There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

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

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

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

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

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

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

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

There is no unique picture of reality.

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.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.