“It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.”

With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.

Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.

In philosophy equally as in poetry it is the highest and most useful prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.

The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

A great mind must be androgynous.

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.

Silence does not always mark wisdom.

Democracy is the healthful lifeblood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy which must sadden, or at least soften every reflecting observer.

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

I never knew a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in his head or heart somewhere or other.

My purpose here is to affirm that the unitive state is a hidden path in itself, a movement in its own right that ultimately leads to no-self (no true-self and no-union). In short, the unitive state is the hidden path to no-self.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

I love black because it affirms, designs and styles. A woman in a black dress is a pencil stroke.

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

Christianity affirms the value of each individual soul. Nazism denies it.

But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understand, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses.

Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.

Don’t surround yourself with people who just affirm you. Surround yourself with people who challenge you.