There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

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.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Don’t say I hate institutionalised religion – rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I’m saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Whether we’re happy with our circumstances or not, giving God praise is so important.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

All men are equal before fish.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

All I know is that, thanks to a sort of habit which has always been ingrained in me, I have never, at any moment of my life, experienced the least difficulty in addressing myself to God as to a supreme Someone.

The truth is lived, not taught.

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.

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air we wawl and cry. When we are born we cry, that we are come to this great state of fools.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

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

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.

Every man is his own hell.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

The first step in a person’s salvation is knowledge of their sin.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.

I think Bible principles are principles for life.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

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.

A covenant made with God should be regarded not as restrictive but as protective.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

Since God created the world, He also created reality.