Genius is talent exercised with courage.
If there were a verb meaning “to believe falsely,” it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
How small a thought it takes to fill a life.
An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.
If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.
The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.
Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.
Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.
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.