Echoes

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Nature of the world was not created for us by divine will: such great fault is inherent in it.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world. Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world. Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good. That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations. Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men. Although it is beyond the reach of any human faculties, man has the power of turning his attention and love towards it. Nothing can ever justify the assumption that any man, whoever he may be, has been deprived of this power. It is a power which is only real in this world in so far as it is exercised. The sole condition for exercising it is consent. This act of consent may be expressed, or it may not be, even tacitly; it may not be clearly conscious, although it has really taken place in the soul. Very often it is verbally expressed although it has not in fact taken place. But whether expressed or not, the one condition suffices: that it shall in fact have taken place. To anyone who does actually consent to directing his attention and love beyond the world, towards the reality that exists outside the reach of all human faculties, it is given to succeed in doing so. In that case, sooner or later, there descends upon him a part of the good, which shines through him upon all that surrounds him.

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.

While I breathe, I hope.

The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

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

The blue of the sky compensates for the brevity of life.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, — the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.

To-morrow's action! Can that hoary wisdom, Borne down with years, still doat upon tomorrow! That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy, The coward, and the fool, condemn'd to lose A useless life in waiting for to-morrow, To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow, Till interposing death destroys the prospect Strange! that this general fraud from day to day Should fill the world with wretches undetected. The soldier, labouring through a winter's march, Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph; Still to the lover's long-expecting arms To-morrow brings the visionary bride. But thou, too old to hear another cheat, Learn, that the present hour alone is man's.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

There is nothing new under the sun.