When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

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

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

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

Man – a being in search of meaning.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

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.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

Maybe I should say that memory interests me a great deal, because I think we all tell stories of our lives to ourselves as well as to other people. Well, women do, anyway. Women do this a lot. And I think when men get older, they do this too, but maybe in slightly different terms.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Science is but an image of the truth.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

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.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

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

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

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

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.

Nature is not human hearted.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.