Famous Quotes

"I man is a prisoner of only his own mind."

"If we try to measure Now, we find it's always gone, has become part of the past."

"Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning."

"If I could put it into a very few words, dear sir, I should say that our prevalent belief is in moderation. We inculcate the virtue of avoiding excesses of all kinds—even including, if you will pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself."

"There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere."

"Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror"

"Rien ne sert de courir il faut partir à point"

"Love delayed is lust augmented."

"Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner."

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed."

"Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the madman in us who forces us to adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins. Once he withdraws, we are alone indeed! We cannot be normal and alive at the same time."

"If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert"

"The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language."

"Observe the movements of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground."

"Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere."

"...even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water."

"There is no sickness worse for me than words that to be kind must lie."

"The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play"

"Пустинните бурени оцеляват, а пролетното цвете разцъфва и повяхва."

"All is flux"

"Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once."

"What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?"