Life and Existence

And a rose, she lived as roses do, the space of a morn.

And nowhere, surely, should we discover more painful and absolute sacrifice. . . . The queen bids farewell to freedom, the light of day. . . . The workers give five or six years of their life, and shall never know love, or the joys of maternity.

Nothing is more difficult to transact, nor more dubious to succeed, nor more dangerous to manage, than to make oneself chief to introduce new orders. Because the introducer has for enemies all those whom the old orders benefit, and has for lukewarm defenders all those who might benefit by the new orders.

Nothing is accidental in the universe -- this is one of my Laws of Physics -- except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him alright.

I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.

Time discovers truth.

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

The love of truth has its reward in heaven and even on earth.

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

This I know - that I know nothing.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.