Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on its delight is murder, and its end is despair.
Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full, that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.
I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth.
Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
The lie is a condition of life.
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.
The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.
The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest success only comes later.
There is room in the smallest cottage for a happy loving pair.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
To good and true love fear is forever affixed.
A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
Joy's smile is much closer to tears than laughter.
The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.
Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.
Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.
Coercion may prevent many transgressions but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst expect the best and take what comes.
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples.
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to decide one way or another.
Half a truth is often a great lie.
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.
One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
If youth knew if age could.
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