Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.

Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically - while simulating a triumphant march forward - than it is done by the two English Houses of Parliament?

If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another - and always into a better set - things might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the ocean - there is nothing there.

It is possible to lead astray an entire generation, to strike it blind, to drive it insane, to direct it towards a false goal. Napoleon proved this.

Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.

I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion and information, such feebleness of thought.

What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there must be in a woman to get over all the palisades, all the fences, within which she is held captive!

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.

Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men.

Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.

Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.

No one is to blame. It is neither their fault nor ours. It is the misfortune of being born when a whole world is dying.

Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others.

You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

All religions have based morality on obedience, that is to say, on voluntary slavery. That is why they have always been more pernicious than any political organization. For the latter makes use of violence, the former - of the corruption of the will.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

Yes, I am Algerian of Moroccan origin through my parents, but all my life is Algeria. I was born there.

At one point in your life, you'll have the thing you want or the reasons why you don't.

I tell my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective.

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

There is a very good chance I could have been a screw-up for the rest of my life.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

When I sent those scripts, that was the lowest point of my life. We'd just had our second son, and when I went to collect them from hospital, I went to the bank to try and get some money to buy some diapers, the screen showed I've got $26 left.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

I define success as being comfortable with yourself and your life. And that is about as good as it gets, really.