Life and Existence

The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night.

The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously

God is dead: but considering the state the species Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Cor ad cor loquitur.

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Firmly I believe and truly

Praise to the Holiest in the height,

If I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

She [the Catholic Church] holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin.

Two and two only supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator.

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

This hath not offended the king.

Fare well my dear child and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven.

I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and my coming down let me shift for my self.