“The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.”

The madman is a dreamer awake.

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.

Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly.

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.

There is little that gives children greater pleasure than when a grown-up lets himself down to their level, renounces his oppressive superiority and plays with them as an equal.

All family life is organized around the most damaged person in it.

The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

Knowledge is the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified observations.

If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.

A strong egoism is a protection.

The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection.

Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks.

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.

When actually what’s going to happen is we’re going to radically expand our lives billions and billions of times in every way, in every dimension and so I’m looking forward to things I can’t even imagine yet.

The prerequisite for receiving the grace of God is to know you need it.

I have no idea what my teacher’s intentions were – whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.

I thought the world had actually ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again.

All know the way, but few actually walk it.

I didn’t tell my kids, ‘You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.’ They chose these things on their own, and I don’t think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.

One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating.

Gay people don’t actually try to convert people. That’s Jehovah’s Witnesses you’re thinking of.