“Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke.”

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Love must neither beg nor demand. Love must be strong enough to find certainty within itself. It then cease to be moved and becomes the mover.

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.

The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

In every truth, the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is onesided.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God’s name is Abraxas.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children; often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those that destroy them.

Madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom.

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

The river is everywhere.

I have lost friends, some by death, others by sheer inability to cross the street.

If you are born with fame, it is an accident. If you die with fame, it is an achievement.

Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human.

Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.

There are the people who really, really enjoy being celebrities, and then there are the people who came by it maybe by accident.