If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
So in the end, when one is doing philosophy, one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.
You sometimes see in a wind a piece of paper blowing about anyhow. Suppose the piece of paper could make the decision: ‘Now I want to go this way.’ I say: ‘Queer, this paper always decides where it is to go, and all the time it is the wind that blows it. I know it is the wind that blows it.’ That same force which moves it also in a different way moves its decisions.
People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them – that does not occur to them.
Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy. But if he is not in his right element, what then? Well, then he just has to make the best of appearing before the world as a cripple.
Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.
If you already have a person’s love no sacrifice can be too much to give for it; but any sacrifice is too great to buy it for you.
If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside! The honorable thing to do is put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.
I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.
Understand or die.
Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn’t rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.
What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it.
Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.
This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it-or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding.
If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children ‘There are no fairies’; he can omit to teach them the word ‘fairy’.
Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up “What’s that?” – It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said: this is a man, this is a house, etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what’s this then?
A picture of a complete apple tree, however accurate, is in a certain sense much less like the tree itself than is a little daisy.
The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.
The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.
Talent is a spring from which fresh water is constantly flowing. But this spring loses its value if it is not used in the right way.