“He who seeks wisdom is a wise man; he who thinks he has found it is mad.”

If you don’t know, ask. You will be a fool for the moment, but a wise man for the rest of your life.

What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

The greatest power of ruling consists in the exercise of self-control.

No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

Many things have fallen only to rise higher.

There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

He who asks with timidity invites a refusal.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.

No man is free who is a slave to the flesh.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.

The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.

The whole notion of sanity may be an attempt to medicalize morality – to speak of the good in the language of health: to make us more accurate, more scientific in our wanting – but by the same token it becomes a form of moral blackmail.

You, mad to expect repentance,Tear your robe all you want;I will never repent!

I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?

We are content in the ‘given’ in sensation’s quest. We have been metamorphosised from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.