There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

An index is a great leveller.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

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.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

You can’t take care of charity unless you take care of yourself first.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

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

There is no wealth but life.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

What goes up must come down.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

War settles nothing.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.