Of all the sciences needful for men, the chief one is the knowledge of how to live, doing as little harm as possible; and of all arts, the most important is that which teaches how to avoid evil, and how to produce good with the least violence.
Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.
Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing.
The sum of behaviour is to retain a man's dignity without intruding upon the liberty of others.
And pines with thirst amidst a sea of waves.
Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.
Man is absurd by what he seeks, great by what he finds.
Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.
Charity is a universal benevolence, and benevolence an habit of love.
Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man's knowledge.
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in one's own sunshine.
Every idea I get I have to deny, that's my way of testing it.
Art repeats the eternal Ideas apprehended through pure contemplation, the essential and abiding element in all the phenomena of the world.
If only these metaphysicians would give their attention to the lengthy discursive processes which lead science to build new intuitions.
I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party.
He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.
Paradise on earth is where I am.
Perfect valour consists in doing without witnesses what one would be capable of doing before the world at large.
I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.
In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are.
Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning.
One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.
Do not say or do what is base, even when you are alone. Learn to feel shame in your own eyes much more than before others.
Virtue is the same both for men and for women.
When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
The imagination is nothing other than the subject transported into things.
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
On some preference esteem is based; To esteem everything is to esteem nothing.
This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now, and instead of calling it 'work', realize that this is play.
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