What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

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

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

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

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

Nothing can come of nothing.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

All men are equal before fish.

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

That government is best which governs least.

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

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

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

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

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

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

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

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.