Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

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

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

Nature is not human hearted.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.

I see children, all children, as humanity’s most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

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.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

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

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.