"A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it."

"As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us--but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensory experience."

"I am one thing, my writings are another."

"No man was ever wise by chance"

"Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,-Wait and hope."

"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."

"Choose to be happy. It is what we have all done."

"To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

"I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace."

"If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin."

"One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been."

"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!"

"Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a new way to stand."

"It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are."

"When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things."

"Fair speech may hide a foul heart."

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

"Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window."

"If you reveal your secrets to the wind,you should not blame the wind forrevealing them to the trees."

"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration."

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."

"I was never aware of any other option but to question everything."