There is one [disease] which is widespread, and from which men rarely escape. This disease varies in degree to different men… I refer to this: that every person thinks his mind… more clever and more learned than it is.

A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

Attention the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

Seek the pleasure in what you’re doing rather than in how it might ultimately benefit you.

The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself.

I have the same religion as that tree over there.

Gratefulness draws on the best of the human spirit in all of us. It renews and refreshes ourselves, and best of all it is contagious.

When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as though you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.

Emptiness is the beginning of all things.

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

No love story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning.

Love has already named us before we can even begin to speak back to it.

The highest to which man can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder, let him be content; nothing higher can it give him, and nothing further should he seek behind it; here is the limit.

The torch of doubt and chaos—this is what the sage steers by.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

If you want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth: Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.

Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth or power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which sees everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility. Pleasure disappoints, not possibility.

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

A thousand secrets are hidden in simply sitting still.

Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.

What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words…. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character…. We are suspended in…

When I walk out into the world, I take no thoughts with me. That’s not easy, but you can learn to do it. An empty mind is hungry, so you can look at everything longer, and closer. Don’t hum! When you listen with empty ears, you hear more. And this is the core of the…