“Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other.”

No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings – the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.

Those vestiges of natures left behind Which reason cannot quite expel from us Are still so slight that naught prevents a man From living a life even worthy of the gods.

Nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another’s death.

Things stand apart so far and differ, that What’s food for one is poison for another.

How many evils have flowed from religion.

How is it that the sky feeds the stars?

It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.

How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings.

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.

The sum total of all sums total is eternal.

Only religion can lead to such evil.

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.

Epicurus whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.

A page with a poem on it is less attractive than a page with a poem on it and some tea stains.

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

We who preach have one tool. We are people of the book.

The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he’s coming down.

What we really believe is what we manifest. What we believe, we see.

I remember vividly one distinct memory of arriving in Hong Kong

What matters is not the accomplishments you achieve; what matters is the person you become.

We’re discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day.