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

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Hope is not a resting place but a starting point – a cactus, not a cushion.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

My life is the road, man. I need to keep moving.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it’s a green light.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

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

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

There’s hope for everyone. That’s what makes the world go round.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

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

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

Real living is living for others.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.