Life and Existence

Men say that we ought not to enquire into the supreme God and the nature of the universe, nor busy ourselves in searching out the causes of things, and that such enquiries are impious; whereas the very opposite is the truth.

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away... A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Man is a being in search of meaning.

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest.

Life is a short exile

Life is a short exile

‎ Love is a madness produced by an unclassifiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being

Justice, although it resembles a mirage, is really concerned with internal rather than external activity, with the true self and its business.

It would be better for me that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

It's like this, I think: the excellence of a good body doesn't make the soul good, but the other way around: the excellence of a good soul makes the body as good as it can be.

It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.

It is impossible to improve the world if first the man does not improve.

It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn. The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

Is there any self-existent fire? and do all those things which we call self-existent exist? or are only those things which we see, or in some way perceive through the bodily organs, truly existent, and nothing whatever besides them? And is all that which we call an intelligible essence nothing at all, and only a name?

I thought to myself: I am wiser than this man; neither of us probably knows anything that is really good, but he thinks he has knowledge, when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think I have.

I perplex others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself.

I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense.

I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the ‘darkness’ of sensory knowledge.

I must go beyond the dark world of sense information to the clear brilliance of the sunlight of the outside world. Once done, it becomes my duty to go back to the cave in order to illuminate the minds of those imprisoned in the ‘darkness’ of sensory knowledge.

I have good hope that there is something after death.

I have good hope that there is something after death.