Quotes about Philosophy

God as a sense of warmth about the heart, God as exultation, God as tears in the eyes, God as a rush of power or thought—that was all right. But God as truth, God as 2 + 2 = 4—that wasn't so clearly all right.

Still, if one has to suffer in order to be beautiful, one must also expect to be ugly in order not to suffer.

Query: how to combine the belief that the world is a to a great extent illusory with belief that it is none the less essential to improve the illusion? How to be simultaneously dispassionate and not indifferent, serene like an old man and active like a young one?

Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in time—events and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine.

It begins easily for the sake of poor imbeciles like me; but it goes on, it goes on, more and more fully and subtly and abstrusely and embracingly.

A philosophy of work is essential if we would be whole men, holy men, healthy men, joyous men. A certain amount of goods is necessary for a man to lead a good life, and we have to make that kind of society where it is easier for men to be good.

Self-knowledge is the basis of jeet kune do because it is effective not only for the individual's martial art but also for his life as a human being.

Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible; life in a palace is possible; therefore even in a palace a right life is possible.

Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.

It's better to bet on this life than on the next.

It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big.

We can't turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls.