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

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

A useless life is an early death.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

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

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

Life is wasted on the living.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Silence is the mother of truth.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

The brain is wider than the sky.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Some people are jerks, and some people aren’t.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

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

This way of life is worth defending.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

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

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.