Echoes

I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Do not, my soul, seek immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.

To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity. ... Don't stop to marvel.

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment. Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

My soul, my soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you—are you there? I have returned, here I am again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you again, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you anew. Shall I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know, the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call "divine". There is no other way. All other ways are false paths.

Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

...why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, but love it.

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good.

Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day.

The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Accept everything just the way it is.