Life and Existence

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life but that it bothers him less and less.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life but that it bothers him less and less.

Bores bore each other, too, but it never seems to teach them anything.

A bore is a fellow talker who can change the subject to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.

Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but in the ability to start over.

It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.

One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas—and you have to work through it all.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

The truth about a man is, first of all, what it is that he keeps hidden.

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light. Give thanks for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. And if perchance you see no reason for giving thanks, rest assured the fault is in yourself. Tecumseh Shawnee Chief

Will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be destroyed, which is improved by justice and depraved by injustice?

What kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue, and who would be pleased to refute anyone who says anything untrue; one who, however, wouldn’t be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it.

We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.

We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.

Those whose hearts are fixed on reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers.

Those who have knowledge are more confident than those who have no knowledge, and they are more confident after they have learned than before.

This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

This feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.

They think that you bear old age more easily not because of the way you live but because you’re wealthy, for the wealthy, they say, have many consolations.