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

There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.

His mind is so open – so open that ideas simply pass through it.

One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.

Few people would not be the worse for complete sincerity.

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.

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, And ev’n with Paradise devise the snake; For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blackened – Man’s forgiveness give and take!

Better is the sinner who hath thoughts about God, than the saint who hath only the show of sanctity.

Should they whisper false of you, Never trouble to deny; Should the words they say be true, Weep and storm and say they lie.

After reading between the lines, I can secretly hear Socrates screaming: ‘I’m the wisest man to ever live in the world. Anyone who will claim that title after me he’s fake!

A hair divides what is false and true.

There is nothing that is more often clothed in an attractive garb than a false creed.

A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.

A peace-mingling falsehood is preferable to a mischief-stirring truth.