A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

All truth passes through three stages. 

First, it is ridiculed. 

Second, it is violently opposed. 

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. 

Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive — 

to release our inner selves from the spiritual death 

that comes with living behind a facade 

designed to conform to external definitions 

of who and what we are.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions 

from insufficient premises.

The highest reward for a person's toil is 

not what they get for it, 

but what they become by it.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained 

not by its growth, 

but by washing away from it 

all that is not gold.

Penetrating so many secrets, 

we cease to believe in the unknowable. 

But there it sits nevertheless, 

calmly licking its chops.

You are the music 

while the music lasts.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. 

The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over 

and let the beautiful stuff out.

All we have to decide is 

what to do 

with the time that is given us.

'Tis the sharpness of our mind 

that gives the edge 

to our pains and pleasures.

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, 

we do not like to consider our equal.

There's a certain kind of scepticism that can't bear uncertainty.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, 

and the word happy would lose its meaning 

if it were not balanced by sadness. 

It is far better take things as they come along 

with patience and equanimity.

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.