Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

I have wandered all my life, 

and I have also travelled;
the difference between the two being this,
that we wander for distraction,
but we travel for fulfilment.

The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. 

I don't believe. 

I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. 

Either I know a thing, 

and then I know it — 

I don't need to believe it.

Genius not only diagnoses the situation 

but supplies the answers.

They never taste 

who always drink: 

They always talk, 

who never think.

Follow your honest convictions 

and be strong.

There is no expedient to which a man will not go 

to avoid the labour of thinking.

The adjustment of reality to the masses 

and of the masses to reality 

is a process of unlimited scope, 

as much for thinking 

as for perception.

Do what you love. 

Know your own bone; 

gnaw at it, 

bury it, 

unearth it, 

and gnaw it still.

We read deeply for varied reasons, 

most of them familiar: 

that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; 

that we need to know ourselves better; 

that we require knowledge, 

not just of self and others, 

but of the way things are.

In order to more fully understand this reality, 

we must take into account other dimensions of a broader reality.

Today, 

more than ever before, 

life must be characterised by a sense of Universal responsibility, 

not only nation to nation 

and human to human, 

but also human to other forms of life.

Happiness in this world, 

when it comes, 

comes incidentally. 

Make it the object of pursuit, 

and it leads us a wild-goose chase, 

and is never attained. 

Follow some other object, 

and very possibly 

we may find that we have caught happiness 

without dreaming of it.

Solitude is independence.

Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age.