We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

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

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.

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

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

When we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, something wonderful happens: God begins to change our desires, and we want to be more like Him.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

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.

Our life is made by the death of others.

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

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

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

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.

Be as you wish to seem.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

What you are comes to you.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.