“I see but one rule: to be clear.”

Only great minds can afford a simple style.

If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured.

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?

The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Friendship has its illusions no less than love.

Sometimes the impact of Mozart’s music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.

Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.

On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.

Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

When you want to court a woman, court her sister first

Government cannot close its eyes to the pollution of waters, to the erosion of soil, to the slashing of forests any more than it can close its eyes to the need for slum clearance and schools.

If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.

If you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water it tastes very salty. If you put a spoonful of salt in a lake of fresh water the taste is still pure and clear. Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

There is clearly much left to be done, and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it.

So, for instance, let me make this clear: You know I signed a statement. I will not raise taxes on anybody. I don’t want to raise taxes on the American people.

A distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man’s imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.

If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.