The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?

TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Thus the habit of loving someone is nothing other than BENEVOLENCE by which we want the good of others, not for the profit that we gain from it, but because it is agreeable to us in itself. CHARITY is a general benevolence. And JUSTICE is charity in accordance with wisdom. ... so that one does not do harm to someone without necessity, and that one does as much good as one can, but especially where it is best employed.

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

The precepts "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you" ... are born from the Gospel's profound spirit of individualism, which refuses to let one's own actions and conduct depend in any way on somebody else's acts. The Christian refuses to let his acts be mere reactions-such conduct would lower him to the level of his enemy. The act is to grow organically from the person, "as the fruit from the tree." ... What the Gospel demands is not a reaction which is the reverse of the natural reaction, as if it said: "Because he strikes you on the cheek, tend the other"-but a rejection of all reactive activity, of any participation in common and average ways of acting and standards of judgment.

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.

The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge.

A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement.

And thus Christianity is played in, Christendom. Artists in dramatic costumes make their appearance in artistic buildings-there really is no danger at all, anything but that: the teacher is a royal functionary, steadily promoted, making a career-and how he dramatically plays Christianity, in short, he plays comedy. He lectures about renunciation, but he himself is being steadily promoted; he teaches all that about despising worldly titles and rank, but he himself is making a career.

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?

There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude...we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

When capitalism is negated, social processes no longer stand under the rule of blind natural laws.

It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.

To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak. That is, it creates a vision of the world that puts into the limelight the social misery that is usually hidden or concealed by the dominant viewpoints of a society. "Intellectual" in that sense simply means those who are willing to reflect critically upon themselves as well as upon the larger society and to ascertain whether there is some possibility of amelioration and betterment.

These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.

In the torments of the intellect, there is a certain bearing which is to be sought in vain among those of the heart. Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.

To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.

If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.

If a woman becomes weary and at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it.

Nothing can be preserved that is not good.

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.

Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.

Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.

Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. It does involve the belief that God loves man and for his sake became man and died.

The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries.

I must plunge into the water of doubt again and again.

He who has thought most deeply loves what is most alive.

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. Ch. II; Variants or variant translations of this statement have also been attributed to Bakunin: The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. A boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished.

Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.

Natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion.

There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe... For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C. may read our natures.

The first thinker was, without a doubt, the first man obsessed by why. An unaccustomed mania, not at all contagious: rare indeed are those who suffer from it, who are a prey to questioning, and who can accept no given because they were born in consternation.

As soon as one returns to Doubt (if it could be said that one has ever left it), undertaking anything at all seems not so much useless as extravagant. Doubt works deep within you like a disease, or even more effectively, like a faith.

Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?

Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.

For this, to draw a right line from every point, to every point, follows the definition, which says, that a line is the flux of a point, and a right line an indeclinable and inflexible flow.

To be in touch with senses and emotions beyond conquest is to enter the realm of the mysterious.

Whatever can be done another day can be done today.

"I don't want to! Why should I?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't." "So what? I don't care about other people." "You should." "But why?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't."

"What is meant by saying that my choice of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of chance?...It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called but only one, and that one either one, shall be chosen.

These terrible sociologists, who are the astrologers and alchemists of our twentieth century.

Pass in, pass in, the angels say, In to the upper doors; Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise.

This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

We can open our hearts to God, but only with Divine help.

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.