“We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision.”

The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

People become concerned with being more humble than other people.

Treat ’em like dogs, and you’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ’em like men, and you’ll have men’s works.

By our actions we tell Him of our love.

Never depend on one action.

The universe doesn’t give you what you ask for with your thoughts – it gives you what you demand with your actions.

Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action.

He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.

You know well that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.

Love needs to be proved by action.