Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.
Faith never makes a confession.
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.
I totally disagree with the view that the Tibet struggle will die, and there will be no hope for Tibet, after the Dalai Lama passes away.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.
Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.
There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples my philosophy is kindness.
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.
I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.
I am easily satisfied with the very best.
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.
There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
My faith helps me overcome such negative emotions and find my equilibrium.
I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
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