Philosophy quotes

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

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.

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

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

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.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

Law is mind without reason.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

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.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.