Life and Existence

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

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

The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There's no chance of their having a conscious glimpse of the truth as long as they refuse to disturb the things they take for granted and remain incapable of explaining them. For if your starting point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question.

There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it?

There is nothing I like better than conversing with aged men. For I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire whether the way is smooth and easy or rugged and difficult. Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give it?