If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."

Does man think because he has found that thinking pays? Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.

Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

You always hear people say that philosophy makes no progress and that the same philosophical problems which were already preoccupying the Greeks are still troubling us today. But people who say that do not understand the reason why it has to be so. The reason is that our language has remained the same and always introduces us to the same questions. ... I read: "philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got,...". What a strange situation. How extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or that we could not get any further! Was it because Plato was so extremely clever?

What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - forms of life.

In philosophy the race is to the one who can run slowest-the one who crosses the finish line last.

What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.

At the end of reasons comes persuasion.

The thought is the significant proposition.

The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway.

My difficulty is only an - enormous - difficulty of expression.

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem.

When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything... And all rites are of this kind.

I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.

Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.

Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.

To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (5.6) Variant translations: The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world. The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult "What is that?"

I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!! That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts.

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

You won't - I really believe - get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.

This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

This is not for me, I want an entirely rural spot.

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

But ordinary language is all right.

The world is all that is the case.

The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word - like a lump of sugar in water.

"It is necessary to be given the prop that all elementary props are given." This is not necessary because it is even impossible. There is no such prop! That all elementary props are given is SHOWN by there being none having an elementary sense which is not given.

A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in...

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

The World and Life are one. Physiological life is of course not "Life". And neither is psychological life. Life is the world. Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic. Ethics and Aesthetics are one.

Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.

The world and life are one.

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.