Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

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.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

If I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

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

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we’re alive it’s not going to change. You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.

I like it when someone tells me ‚I don’t agree.‘ This is a true collaborator. When they say ‚Oh, how great, how great, how great,‘ that’s not useful.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

Nature is not human hearted.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I’ve done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

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.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

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

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.