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.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

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

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

There is no wealth but life.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Character is destiny.

Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

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

The faster you go, the shorter you are.

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

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.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

Time itself comes in drops.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Alas! You complain that your soul is out of tune. Then ask the Master to tune the heart-strings.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

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

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

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

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Generally, a writer of force is anywhere from 20 years to 200 years ahead of his generation.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

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

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

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

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we’re dreaming all the time. That’s what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

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

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

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.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.

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

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.

Eight, as you know, is not a good number for a multi-member court.