You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

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

Put a love note in his shaving kit before he leaves on a business trip.

The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Life is our dictionary.

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

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

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

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

The object of the superior man is truth.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

The sun is gone, but I have a light.

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

The lie is a condition of life.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

I don’t think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It’s essentially just a long narrative form. What you use that long narrative form for can be very different.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.