Things come to you without you necessarily knowing what they mean.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance 

when the need for illusion is deep.

Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

Freedom: to walk free and own no superior.

Idealism is the despot of thought, 

just as politics is the despot of will.

Without education 

we are in a horrible and deadly danger 

of taking educated people seriously.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Have a very good reason for everything you do.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

A truer image of the world, 

I think, 

is obtained by picturing things 

as entering into the stream of time 

from an eternal world outside, 

than from a view which regards time 

as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.

Ideals jump across the hierarchies of the printed word.

Truth exists; only lies are invented.

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. 

They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; 

otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

From each according to his abilities, 

to each according to his needs.

Face the facts of being what you are, 

for that is what changes what you are.

I want to keep my dreams, 

even bad ones, 

because without them, 

I might have nothing all night long.

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings 

in such a way as to complete and fulfil them, 

for it alone takes them and joins them 

by what is deepest in themselves.

To invent is to discern, to choose.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

If I could find anything blacker than black, 

I'd use it.

This above all; 

to thine own self be true.

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, 

and try to keep looking upward.

The works must be conceived with fire in the soul 

but executed with clinical coolness.

I am, indeed, a king, 

because I know how to rule myself.

Sincerity is moral truth.

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better 

when we were defenceless against tigers 

than they are today 

when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

I can't go on. 

I'll go on.

The care of human life and happiness, 

and not their destruction, 

is the first and only object of good government.

Music fathoms the sky.

For I have learned to look on nature, 

not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, 

but hearing oftentimes 

the still, sad music of humanity.

A wise man should so write 

(though in words understood by all men) 

that wise men only should be able to commend him.

I was cut off from the world. 

There was no one to confuse or torment me, 

and I was forced to become original.

In order to improve the mind, 

we ought less to learn, 

than to contemplate.

Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, 

for a liar who will deceive with his tongue 

will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.

Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science 

have been given their initial expression

 in attractively modest terms, 

with no fanfare.

Laughter does not please the mighty.

Most of the evil of the world comes about 

not out of evil motives, 

but somebody saying 

'get with the program, 

be a team player'.

Education is what survives 

when what has been learned 

has been forgotten.

A forest bird never wants a cage.

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! 

When work is a duty, life is slavery.

It's not that the Irish are cynical. 

It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect 

for everything 

and everybody.

Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, 

and make an outward pretence to it; 

but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Spring was moving in the air above 

and in the earth below and around him, 

penetrating even his dark and lowly little house 

with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

The subjectivisation of the universal in art 

brings the universal downward 

on one hand, 

while on the other 

it helps raise the individual toward the universal.