A book should serve as the axe

 for the frozen sea within us.

Eternity is not the hereafter … this is it. 

If you don't get it here, 

you won't get it anywhere.

All our science, 

measured against reality,

is primitive and child-like —

and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, 

you know it’s not your path. 

Your own path you make with every step you take. 

That’s why it’s your path.

This is my simple religion. 

There is no need for temples; 

no need for complicated philosophy. 

Our own brain, 

our own heart is our temple; 

the philosophy is kindness.

We make the world significant

by the courage of our questions

and the depth of our answers.

Men fear thought 

as they fear nothing else on earth

 — more than ruin — 

more even than death … 

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, 

destructive and terrible, 

thought is merciless 

to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. 

Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. 

Thought is great and swift and free, 

the light of the world, 

and the chief glory of man.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, 

for every opinion now accepted 

was once eccentric.

I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, 

but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. 

We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, 

and I think we must never forget that. 

After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy.

Every man's work, 

whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, 

is always a portrait of himself.

The man who has no inner-life 

is a slave to his surroundings.

In my solitude I have pondered much 

on the incomprehensible subjects 

of space, eternity, life and death.

To kill an error is as good a service as, 

and sometimes even better than, 

the establishing of a new truth or fact.

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. 

You cannot create experience. 

You must undergo it.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, 

but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

Beware of the man 

who works hard to learn something, 

learns it, 

and finds himself 

no wiser than before.

You know those nights, 

when you're sleeping, 

and it's totally dark, 

and absolutely silent, 

and you don't dream, 

and there's only blackness, 

and this is the reason, 

it's because on those nights 

you've gone away. 

On those nights, 

you're in someone else's dream, 

you're busy in someone else's dream.

There will be well-testable theories, 

hardly testable theories, 

and non-testable theories. 

Those which are non-testable 

are of no interest to empirical scientists. 

They may be described as metaphysical.

The only way to deal 

with an unfree world 

is to become so absolutely free 

that your very existence 

is an act of rebellion.

There are also two kinds of truths: 

truth of reasoning and truths of fact. 

Truths of reasoning are necessary 

and their opposite is impossible; 

those of fact are contingent 

and their opposite is possible.

The highest activity a human being can attain 

is learning for understanding, 

because to understand is to be free.

Desultory reading is delightful, 

but to be beneficial, 

our reading must be carefully directed.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, 

the whole aim and end of human existence.

The problems that exist in the world today 

cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.

Whereas when any of the great mythic imageries 

comes to be read as poetry, as art, as a vehicle 

not of empirical information 

but of experience

— in other words: not as a newspaper —

we find a message of accord,

which, in brief, is that of the living god,

who is not apart, 

but within all

and of no definition.

It is one of the great lessons of our study

that for the vulgar, ill- or uninstructed mind,

myths tend to become history

and there ensues a type of attachment 

to the mere accidents of the local forms

that, on the one hand, 

binds so-called believers into contending groups

and, on the other hand,

deprives them all of the substance of the message

each believes itself alone to have received.

All orthodoxies show this tendency in great or slight degree

and they are consequently mutually opposed.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The best part of beauty
is that which no picture can express.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; 

the mechanic that would perfect his work 

must first sharpen his tools.

He who is not contented 

with what he has, 

would not be contented 

with what he would like to have.

The key to wisdom is this — 

constant and frequent questioning, 

for by doubting 

we are led to question 

and by questioning 

we arrive at the truth.

The only defence against the world 

is a thorough knowledge of it.

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; 

all this is nothing but to perceive.

Nothing is more active than thought, 

for it travels over the universe, 

and nothing is stronger than necessity 

for all must submit to it.

Ideas are like stars; 

you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. 

But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, 

you choose them as your guides, 

and following them 

you will reach your destiny.

One should as a rule respect public opinion 

in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation 

and to keep out of prison, 

but anything that goes beyond this 

is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, 

and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, 

and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Vivere est Cogitare

刚下过雨又要下雨的云

We are what we repeatedly do. 

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.