“Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.”

When man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.

The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.

When morals are sufficient, law is unnecessary; when morals are insufficient, law is unenforceable.

Maniacal suicide. -This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

Melancholy suicide. – This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.

The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.

A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.

By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.

Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.

That men have an interest in knowing the world which surrounds them, and consequently that their reflection should have been applied to it at an early date, is something that everyone will readily admit.

Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

Ask for what you want, but be willing to take what God gives you. It may be better than what you asked for.

I was always willing to take a great deal of the burden of getting along in life on my own shoulders, but I wasn’t willing to give myself a pat on the back. I was always looking to somebody else to give me that. .. That was all wrong.

What we seek to accomplish is cool, But what are we willing to sacrifice in order to make it happen!

It’s necessary to have an energy that carries you forward. You need the will to live, to have a great curiosity. To look for the best in life, to find new interests.

Our insatiable drive to rummage deep beneath the surface of the earth is a willful expansion of our dysfunctional civilization into Nature.

I firmly believe you’re never supposed to wish for more than you’re willing to work for. Expectations should never exceed your effort.

It’s not where you’re trying to go in life that is the problem, it’s what are you willing to leave behind in order to get there.

You will never change anything that you are willing to tolerate.