Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

The pause between the errors and trials of the day and the hopes of the night.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

In every parting there is an image of death.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

If somebody crafts an interesting tweet that’ll lead me to their blog, I’m going to their blog.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

I haven’t written my own epitaph, and I’m not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple, and that it will point people not to me, but to the One I served.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

I think what we’ve found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about, they tend to be more engaging. I think that we’re really going to see this huge shift where a lot of industry is and products are just going to be remade to be social.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.