The whole secret of life 

is to be interested 

in one thing profoundly 

and in a thousand things well.

The past is but the past of a beginning.

Ignorance and superstition
ever bear a close and mathematical relation
to each other.

We promise according to our hopes 

and perform according to our fears.

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. 

I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. 

And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

The harder the struggle, 

the more glorious the triumph. 

Self-realisation demands very great struggle.

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

Prometheus is reaching out for the stars 

with an empty grin on his face.

Tomorrow lurks in us, 

the latency to be all that was not achieved before.

The purpose of life 

is to obey the hidden command 

which ensures harmony among all 

and creates an ever better world. 

We are not created only to enjoy the world, 

we are created in order to evolve the cosmos.

Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, 

which I should first break through, 

and pour a torrent of light 

into our dark world.

Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

I have known no man of genius 

who had not to pay, 

in some affliction or defect 

either physical or spiritual, 

for what the gods had given him.

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

The most merciful thing in the world... 

is the inability of the human mind 

to correlate all its contents.

You only live once, 

but if you do it right, 

once is enough.

You begin saving the world 

by saving one man at a time; 

all else is grandiose romanticism 

or politics.

A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown 

that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, 

but can only be understood 

as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment 

and the subsequent measurement.

How little do they see what is, 

who frame their hasty judgments 

upon that which seems.

I think I am intrigued by paradoxes. 

If something seems to be a paradox, 

it has something deeper, 

something worth exploring.

Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.

Fear not for the future, 

weep not for the past.

We always love 

those who admire us; 

we do not always love 

those whom we admire.

The creative habit is like a drug. 

The particular obsession changes, 

but the excitement, 

the thrill of your creation 

lasts.

Honest people don't hide their deeds.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; 

you are the window through which 

you must see the world.

A well chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine 

for the more common mental disorders, 

and may be used as much for prevention as cure.

A person who doubts himself 

is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies 

and bear arms against himself. 

He makes his failure certain 

by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

Errors of taste are very often the outward sign of a deep fault of sensibility.

Darkness is to space 

what silence is to sound, 

i.e., the interval.

It always seems impossible 

until it's done.

Whatever you are, 

be a good one.

The value and rank 

of every art 

is in proportion 

to the mental labour employed in it, 

or the mental pleasure in producing it.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

It is my opinion that everything must be based on a simple idea. 

And it is my opinion that this idea, 

once we have finally discovered it, 

will be so compelling, 

so beautiful, 

that we will say to one another, 

yes, 

how could it have been any different.

The most beautiful people 

we have known 

are those who have 

known defeat, 

known suffering, 

known struggle, 

known loss, 

and have found their way out of those depths

A film is a petrified fountain of thought.

Nobody, 

I think, 

ought to read poetry, 

or look at pictures or statues, 

who cannot find a great deal more in them 

than the poet or artist has actually expressed. 

Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

As you proceed through life, 

following your own path, 

birds will shit on you. 

Don't bother to brush it off.

Getting a comedic view of your situation 

gives you spiritual distance.

Having a sense of humour saves you.

Shadow owes its birth to light.

I know but one freedom, 

and that is the freedom of the mind.

Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum 

in which 

the exhibits are meanings 

and the words are labels. 

To switch languages is to change the labels.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, 

the police are prowling through the cities, 

the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, 

but the earth is still going round the sun.

Coercion may prevent many transgressions; 

but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty.

Neither sex, 

without some fertilisation of the complementary characters of the other, 

is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour.

The struggle alone pleases us, 

not the victory.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, 

but I have felt it.

Never give up, 

for that is just the place and time 

that the tide will turn.