- Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.
- Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government’s ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.
- Once we’re thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it’s only here that the new and the good begins.
- If people tell you that
you should live your life preparing for the future, do not believe them.
Real Life is found only in the present.
- Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.
- I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.
- Very often, all the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth.
- The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful.
- Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.
- Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
- Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.
- Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.
- Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
- Just imagine that the purpose of life is happiness only-then life becomes a cruel and senseless thing. You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity, your intellect and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world. Then life becomes a joy.
- Act as if you are, and you will become such.
- Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.
- Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God’s laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man’s injustice to his fellow man.
- It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the meaning of existence.
- When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness.
- I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
- Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
- Life is what matters, life alone – the continuous, eternal process of discovering life – and not the discovery itself.
- If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself.
- Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.
- People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
- If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man … just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he’s a good man.
- Yes, that’s right… love should come before logic … Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life.