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

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It’s not in happiness. It’s not in impulsive pleasure.

Death is a fearful thing.

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.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

I’ve been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what life brings to me.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

Why am I here? I’m not lucky. That’s God.

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

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

Life is filled with detours and dead ends, trials and challenges of every kind. Each of us has likely had times when distress, anguish, and despair almost consumed us.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.