“If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.”

“Of all, one must doubt.”

“Some people care too much. I think it's called love.”

“Thinking good and bad is hell and heaven.”

[Aeneas] is the symbol of Rome; and, as Aeneas is to Rome, so is ancient Rome to Europe. The Roman Empire and the Latin language were not any empire and any language, but an empire and a language with a unique destiny in relation to ourselves...

[Capitalist–consumerism] is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do... most people today successfully live up to this ideal... the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more.

[Paul] is a giant puzzle because he really doesn’t care too much about scholarship and history... he keeps telling stories that people have demonstrated to him repeatedly are not true. But they’re such great stories that you can tell that he kind of believes they are true... he just doesn’t really have a critical vantage on his own life

[The problem] is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste so much of it... there is nothing the busy man is less busy with than living. [The wise] plan out every day as if it were the last.

A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence. It has no critical faculty... It respects force and can only be slightly influence by kindness... It wants to be ruled and oppressed and to fear its masters. Fundamentally it is entirely conservative and it has a deep aversion to all innovations

Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, ‘I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.’

All is in all, all is in one, and all is ours.

All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.

An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore untrustworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.

Blindly following ancient customs and traditions doesn’t mean that the dead are alive but that the living are dead.

But when you see death, things change. It doesn’t matter if you can’t smile or blink properly

colonies of social insects are somehow equivalent to vast, multicreatured organisms, possessing collective intelligence and a gift for adaptation far superior to the sum of the individual inhabitants

Commenting on Chuang Tzu’s story about the Marquis of Lu trying to help a seabird, Stephen Mitchell writes, 'The marquis…by acting out the Golden Rule, became the golden fool… Love your neighbor as yourself: leave him alone.'

Compassion wins every battle and outlasts every attack.

devotees of the apocalyptic religion of Inevitable Progress [believe] that the Kingdom of Heaven is outside you and in the future.”

Discipline does not mean suppression and control, nor is it adjustment to a pattern or ideology. It means a mind that sees 'what is' and learns from 'what was'.