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

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.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

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.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don’t need another plaque.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Although God loves us unconditionally, He does get angry at sin, wickedness and evil. But He is not an angry God. God hates sin, but He loves sinners! He will never approve of sin in your life, but He always loves you and wants to work with you to make progress in living a holy life in Christ.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

There is nothing so stable as change.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

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

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

The ‚morality of compromise‘ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

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

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

To be is to do.

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

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.