“All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.”

The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

All things that God would have us do are hard for us to do–remember that–and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavours to persuade.

There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.

My body is but the lees of my better being.

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.

The eyes are the gateway to the soul.

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter’s ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.

See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.

To pretend angels do not exist because they are invisible is to believe we never sleep because we don’t see ourselves sleeping.

Even if you look for peace in the places you won the war, you will not find any.

You have to be relentless in your pursuit. Embrace the pain, embrace the struggle, after all, the most pleasurable things in life often require pain.

We set forth our petitions before god, not in order to make known to him our needs and desires, but rather so that we ourselves may realize that in the things it is necessary to turn to god for help.

The will determines itself; it should not be described as blind, any more than vision should be described as deaf.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

He has the most who is most content with the least.

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.