It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages 

to deny what exists 

and to explain what does not exist.

The true measure of a man 

is what he would do 

if he knew he would never be caught.

Things are the way they are 

because they were the way they were.

I am more and more convinced 

that our happiness or our unhappiness depends 

far more on the way we meet the events of life 

than on the nature of those events themselves.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully 

as when they do it from religious conviction.

Most of the dogmatic religions 

have exhibited a perverse talent 

for taking the wrong side 

on the most important concepts in the material universe, 

from the structure of the solar system 

to the origin of man.

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow 

is capable of good.

Being Irish, 

he had an abiding sense of tragedy, 

which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

If history and science have taught us anything, 

it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts

 — such is the duty of the artist.

If you are possessed by an idea, 

you find it expressed everywhere, 

you even smell it.

The world is a strange and wonderful place.

Poetry is emotion put into measure. 

The emotion must come by nature, 

but the measure can be acquired by art.

Viewed freely, 

the English language is the accretion and growth
of every dialect, race, and range of time, 

and is both the free and compacted composition of all.