There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn’t us. Don’t be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

I have such incredible experiences in my life.

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

The truth is lived, not taught.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Truth is what works.

The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

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?

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

Water is life, and clean water means health.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Life is too short not to celebrate nice moments!

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Knowledge is true opinion.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other.

I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I’m a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself – all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Obedience to God is the pathway to the life you really want to live.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.