“Eclecticism. Every truth is so true that any truth must be false.”

It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.

We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.

The man who has ceased to fear has ceased to care.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.

The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible.

Reason teaches us that what is good is good for something, and that what is good for nothing is not good at all.

Another occupation might have been better.

I will begin with the self-styled “Christian” party, who profess to base their morality on the New Testament. But whether it is really more Christian to follow or to ignore the teachings of the Gospels I shall not discuss.

The one self- knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind.

Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.

The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.

An aphorism is true where it has fixed the impression of a genuine experience.

The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.

Religion is rather the attempt to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being.

My external sensations are no less private to my self than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside… the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.

As long as we are faking it we are just showing the world how to fake it – but they already are! They want to see us get real.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

If you haven’t got it. Fake it! Too short? Wear big high heels, but do practice walking!

Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.

Wearing a mask wears you out. Faking it is fatiguing. The most exhausting activity is pretending to be what you know you aren’t.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I’m going to believe Jesus instead.

Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the false to achieve primacy over the facts.