“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.”

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present, very few people have reached this level.

Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3 parts dead.

It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear.

Your writing is never as good as you hoped, but never as bad as you feared.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.

The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.

The power has to be in your desire to see everyone thrive.

All roads are long which lead to one’s heart’s desire.

I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work.

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat?

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.