All gods and devils that have ever existed are within us.
All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.
Any attempt to replace the personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.
Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.
Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept.
God does not send us despair in order to kill us, he sends it in order to awaken us to new life.
Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object.
How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.
Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.
I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.
I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.
I hold that it is permissible for each one of us to die for his faith, but not to kill for his faith.
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
If nature has made you a bat, you shouldn't try and be an ostrich.
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.
Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.
Like all true values, love cannot be bought. Pleasure can be bought, but not love.
Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.
Most people are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.
No permanence is ours, we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds.
Nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.
Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
One cannot have pleasure without giving it.
Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value.
Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children and often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those that destroy them.
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
Property, possessions and riches had also finally trapped him. They were no longer a game and a toy. They had become a chain and a burden.
Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists in putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.
The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
There is nothing so evil, savage, and cruel in nature as the normal man.
There's no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.
Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
Three things cannot hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.
We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.
When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.
Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy.
Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.
Found 51 occurence(s) in 52,568 quotation(s).
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