Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

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

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

It is not the body’s posture, but the heart’s attitude that counts when we pray.

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.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

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.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

You can’t keep your mind on fighting when you’re thinking about a woman. You can’t keep your concentration. You feel like sleeping all the time.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Real living is living for others.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

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

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

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.

Nature does nothing in vain.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

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.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.