One is never wounded by the love one gives, only by the love one expects.
The slope contains many wonders not found at the summit.
Philosophers console themselves with explanations.
The search for first causes is the ultimate wild goose chase.
When you separate thought from life, you get philosophy.
Logical positivism is philosophy from the neck up.
The questions philosophers ask are not so much meaningless as irrelevant.
The truth is what you live through while you’re looking for the truth.
Never confuse a hunger for knowledge with a thirst for truth.
What is true today may be false tomorrow, and true again the day after tomorrow.
What kind of god would create a world in which the means of survival depends on our eating each other?
Wisdom is not making life any harder than it has to be.
I don’t want to be the one who says life is beautiful. I want to be the one who feels it.
Happiness never made anyone rich or famous. That must be why ambitious people avoid it.
If you think happiness is a rare bird you won’t see much of it.
Enjoy the rainbow while it lasts and don’t chase it when it’s gone.
Happiness is what matters, feeling alive-not art or knowledge or money.
Life only wants us to be happy. We impose these burdens on ourselves.
Seekers, what are you seeking? Why aren’t you happy just to be alive?
Days that lift us like a wave, when you feel you could live forever.
The optimist’s hope and the pessimist’s despair: reciprocal illusions.
When death speaks to me, it speaks only of the beauty of life.
The first kiss and the first glass of wine are the best.
Poetry is nothing if it exists only in books. One has to find it in one’s own life.
More sailors have drowned in words than in the sea.
Writing is talking to yourself-with the hope of being overheard.
A basket of ripe fruit is holier than any prayer book.
Whatever we may be or not be to others, to ourselves we are always just ourselves.
It takes a long time to learn how to do something simple.
Information is what you put in empty heads to keep them empty.
Knowledge is just a foundation. The whole point of a foundation is to build on it.
What should be boundless is one’s love of life, not one’s love of art or knowledge.
When Socrates said he knew nothing he still thought he knew more than anyone else.
What do I know about life? What does a windmill know about the wind?
The more diseases you know about the sicker you are.
Success in love is mostly luck, though we hate to admit.
The question must be asked: have we been the beneficiaries or the victims of our education?
The real plague is willful ignorance and education can’t cure that.
My education taught me a lot, but nothing I needed to learn.
Higher education-I wonder how much longer the deception can go on.
Art should be pretentious. The place to be sincere is in one’s relationships.
The spiritual life to me has always meant just one thing: feeling.
The mouse that fears the trap has already been trapped.
Who do I love? I love people who are easy to talk to.
The thread connecting one person, one event, to another exists only in the imagination.
What’s wrong with people is people. There’s no cure for that.
The Big Dream shattered splinters into a thousand little dreams.
The rain that falls wherever it pleases. I want to be that rain.
Freedom began on the day the first sheep wandered away from the herd.
Drink freely the wine life offers you and don’t worry how much you spill.
To know your soul is your own, that’s what counts.
When a thing becomes indispensable it’s time to give it up.
The scientist seeks laws; the historian, causes; the artist, freedom.
Artists, by their free expressions, encourage others to be free. This is the quality that makes works of art enduring.
I never reach those far-off places. New trails tempt me at every turn.
When you love someone, really love them, you don’t put chains on them. You want them to be free.
You don’t have to live by someone else’s rules. Do what you want. Be free.
I had no goals, no ambitions. That left me free to wander and amuse myself.
You are free to create your own way of being. There are no rules.
People on foot, on bikes, in cars, on planes-all chasing freedom.
What do we free spirits want? We just want to think our own thoughts and feel our own feelings. Why should that be a problem for anyone else?
What is eternal is the cloud drifting slowly out of sight.
There is no “the way things are.” Every day is different, and you live it differently.
You can’t judge the present by the past. Each day is different, and you live it differently.
You can’t prepare for the things that change your life. They come suddenly and unannounced.
What would beauty be if the whole world were blind?
The beauty of this day doesn’t depend on its lasting forever.
Order is what exists before you start arranging things.
I’d trade a hundred pretty faces for one person who’s easy to talk to.
No one is more beautiful to me than a person who’s easy to talk to.
Beauty is everywhere you look, but you have to look.
How can you love art, beauty, poetry, and hate life? That’s like saying you love the ocean but hate water.
A hundred lifetimes wouldn’t suffice to see all the beauty in one acre of land.
We are given this beautiful life, this beautiful world, and we destroy it with ingratitude and hate.
The only valid rule for a work of art is that it be true to itself.
Art is the product of an imperfect world. In an ideal world, art would not exist.
Art is the product of an imperfect world. In a perfect world, art would not exist.
No art is harder to master than believing in yourself.
A blackbird doesn’t change its tune to suit the times.
A blank canvas is a playground for the imagination.
Parrots mimic their owners. Their owners consider that a sign of intelligence.
It’s a strange idea people have that thinking makes one intelligent.
Fine words have the power to make even the stupidest person sound intelligent.
We humans are like squirrels who spend all summer gathering and hoarding nuts and when winter comes can’t remember where they are.
Let nothing human be considered sacred. Let nothing human be considered divine.
Beware of puny two-legged creatures claiming to be made in the image of God.
The technological revolution seems to have no higher purpose than to render humanity obsolete.
My feeling about work is that it’s an unnecessary evil, so I’ve always done my best to avoid it.
To avoid starvation is the only excuse for working.
We need places to scream and run wild as well as places to be quiet.
The sight of a worm excites my reverence more than all the gods men have invented.
The true order is what the wind creates by scattering the leaves.
There are 200,000 species of fly alone. So the void, the emptiness, must be in you.
The snow in winter, the flowers in spring. There is no deeper reality.
Nature is impulsive. To be impulsive is to be fully alive.
Obsession is the evil genie who turns pleasure into pain.
The person with an itch can’t understand why everyone’s not scratching.
There is music you never hear unless you play it yourself.
A heart grows flat and stale from too much thinking.
To keep a warm heart in a cold world is the real victory.
Where our attention goes, our mind and body go, too.
Movement is the freedom of the body; stillness, of the mind.
The seductive power of sex and money is nothing compared to that of words.
One needs confidence in the morning and courage at night.
You need fire, conviction, to write. You can’t write out of indifference.
What chance does logic have against a glass of wine and a kiss?
Real dishes break. That’s how you know they’re real.
The landscape looks different from every blade of grass.
Lies have always been easier to invent than reality.
We all live partially in reality and partially in a world of make-believe.
All our prayers can’t keep a single leaf from falling.
This may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it’s the only real one.
Logic can’t explain the salmon swimming upstream. So it denies the existence of salmon.
In spring, the snow must go; in fall, the leaves can’t stay.
There is no deeper reality. The water at the bottom is the same as the water at the top.
When people are facing real hardships in their lives, they have no time to invent imaginary ones.
What do I think? I think it makes no difference what I think.
Every language has its own word for the sun, but the sun us always the same.
In my mind I lead a phantom’s life. My neighbor makes me real.
Language is a ladder that always falls short of reality.
Lovers jump into bed without thinking. It’s the only way it can be done.
A person can drop dead even while singing. But that’s no reason to stop singing.
The examined life: nothing is more futile or counterproductive. The active, joyous, spontaneous life: that is what one should aim for.
My teachers told me: Question everything; take nothing for granted. I question nothing, I take everything for granted.
I don’t travel to learn about the world. I travel for the joy of traveling.
Sing, laugh and be merry because today you’re alive.
There is a madness that is joy, and there is a madness that is just madness.
One should never go dancing with a broken foot, but one should with a broken heart.
In winter, on the darkest nights, one rejoices even to see the tiniest sliver of a moon.
Blessed is the nightbird that sings for joy and not to be heard.
A pessimist is someone who has forgotten the joy of beginning.
Being alive is having what I want, that is my joy, my happiness.
The child’s naive dream of life is the only one worth having.
All laughter is subversive, even the laughter of children.
Mutual helplessness is the essential relation between parent and child.
All children are born rebels and explorers until they’re taught to sit still and obey.
Novelists are basically inviting their readers to play a game of pretend. That’s what fiction is: a game of pretend.
Beautiful untrue things are even more beautiful when they’re true.
All the great novels are about obsession and people who are obsessed.
A story has to break your heart or it’s not worth telling.
Society demands not conformity, but the appearance of conformity. That’s the reason for hypocrisy.
Love is a wild child, always at odds with society.
We should not judge people or try to figure out what makes them tick. We should leave them the hell alone.
We shouldn’t judge people or try to figure out what makes them tick. We should just leave them the hell alone.
No ideology or psychological theory can possibly do justice to the full range of human experience.
When you stop seeing your weaknesses as weaknesses you will overcome them.
We all suffer our share of grief but we are stronger than our grief.
I don’t think about how to live my life. I just live it.
When it comes to living and loving, we’re all amateurs.
What do I aspire to be? Just an ordinary person who values living.
The ripe apple falls, it doesn’t know what else to do.
All creative work begins as play. The more one plays, the better one works.
Skepticism precludes one from believing many things, but not from loving many things.
One shouldn’t be labelled a cynic just because one refuses to believe in fairy tales.
Never hold a belief longer than you can hold your breath.
All the great stories are about obsession and people who are obsessed.
When your share your story with someone, it becomes their story too.
It’s the words we whisper to ourselves that make us who we are.
Words never change. What changes is how one interprets them.
How long does one have to live before one can no longer be fooled by words?
Words can’t save you, but they can give you courage.
The profoundest thing writing teaches us is how much we contradict ourselves.
The greatest obstacle to true learning is the inability to say “I don’t know.
Experience is true, but not the lessons it teaches.
What I learned from the flowers: to live effortlessly.
After one has read everything and thought everything, one still have everything to learn.
What is love after all but trusting in the unknown.
Trust the one with experience, not the one with ideas.
The man who doesn’t howl at the moon when his mother dies is no man at all.
Trees, O trees, why can’t you hold on to your leaves?
Sing through your grief. Don’t let your thoughts weigh you down.
Enjoy your life, the time you have now, because time cannot be found only lost.
Tears have always been easier to shed than explain.
When you’re young, you long for things that don’t exist; and when you’re old, you’re sad because you never found them.
Practically all the sadness we experience in life comes from our feeling sorry for ourselves.
Almost all sadness comes from feeling sorry for oneself.
What good is a song that doesn’t break your heart?
Nobody wants to be nothing. But that’s the greatest thing in the world to be.
No one ever forgets a talk they had that lasted through the night.
No one really remembers anything five minutes after it happens.
Truly caring people know they have to take care of themselves first.
Let a kind word warm you when your thoughts turn cold
To keep a warm heart in winter is the real victory.
You have to pay attention to the road even if you don’t know where you’re going.
My greatest pleasure is to travel down an unfamiliar road.
The secret to being a good traveler is liking a place before you get there.
Love people, not places. Places don’t miss you when you’re gone.
To the tourist, travel is a means to an end; to the traveler, it’s an end in itself.
Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.
A goal ensures progress. But one gets much further without a goal.
When I told the rainbow what its colors meant, it laughed.
The writer provides the text; the reader, the meaning.
Nothing is more futile than looking for meaning in things that have none.
Free will, determinism, meaning, existence, etc. are academic problems, not problems in life.
What can be achieved with suffering can be achieved without it.
What is heroic is not making life any harder that it has to be.
The suicide? What would he have done if death did not exist?
The suicide! What would he have done if death did not exist?
A brutal, relentless self-analysis lies at the heart of all despair.
We usually fail at the things most important to us, precisely because they are so important to us.
The person with an itch can’t understand why everyone isn’t scratching.
People shouldn’t question their desires. They should do what they want.
Desires are only a problem when the means to fulfill them are not available.
Delight in your sensuality, in the dance of your desires. Don’t be ashamed of it.
If my hand on yours trembles it’s because bodies never lie.
When people don’t do what they want, they don’t know what to do.
I like paths that lead nowhere, that leave you wondering where you are.
Everybody calls me “Marty.” I never know what to call myself.
The tiniest mite has an inner life of which we can know nothing.
Never be content with your work, your relationships, your life. That’s the stupid advice philosophers give today.
Everyone I meet wants to give me directions, but I’m not lost.
Nothing is more ridiculous than one person telling another how to live.
One should love oneself enough not to love oneself too much.
All writers are exiles: some by circumstance, some by choice.
Speak in your own voice about the things that matter to you.
Take a wrong turn. Get lost in something you love.
There are no higher levels of consciousness, there are only different ways of perceiving things.
The world we see is beyond our understanding but not beyond our love.
If the cherry trees had to wait for understanding they’d never blossom.
When you act without feeling, that’s the living death.
It’s better to do things you like than to think about what you don’t like.
It is better to do something you like than to think about what you don’t like.
I don’t try to explain or justify my actions. I simply do what I do.
Whatever you love, do it now. Time is not on your side.
One can be a pessimist in thought but not in action.
Thinking always deceives us when it becomes a substitute for action.
The test of our knowledge is not what we know, but what we can do.
The time you absolutely have to get off your ass and act is when action seems futile
You can quarrel with a person’s ideas, but not with their experience.
One’s duty is always and everywhere to be true to one’s own experience.
Those who lack experience always have a lot of ideas.
Experience is not a means to realize the truth. Experience is the truth.
If the sky falls, there’ll be a bigger sky behind it.
Where personal experience is concerned, we all speak a different language.
We feel more than we can express, we see more than we can say.
How beautiful to touch another’s soul with a word, a gesture, a thought.
Religion, culture, education are all things that sound wonderful in theory. In practice, however, they are not so wonderful.
I like dogs that bark a little. The silent ones scare me.
Better to find one thing to live for than a thousand things to be against.
Some thoughts are too angry to sleep. They lie awake all night and become obsessions.
Life is worth living but not worth thinking about.
There is no condition so miserable that thinking can’t make it worse.
Thinking is a way of condemning oneself to solitude.
People don’t think when they’re enjoying themselves. Thinking is a sign of disturbance.
Thinking is a sign of disturbance. When your bladder doesn’t hurt you don’t think about it.
To hate everything is to be wounded by everything.
Hate is only misdirected energy: it gets you nowhere.
Love is as irrational as hate and just as unpredictable.
All hate is the result of people refusing to take responsibility for their own lives.
Moral concepts are useful to the extent that they provoke opposition.
There is no need to corrupt people’s morals. Their morals have been corrupting them for years.
Morality is what the queen expects from the hive, not from herself.
The log on the fire: is it dreaming of the forest?
Memories are never as true as the things one forgets.
You begin with other people’s memories and end up with your own.
The people who enlighten us are the ones who tell us their secrets.
Even the oldest trees aren’t ashamed to stand naked.
Only lies are subtle. Truth walks right up to you in the street and kicks you in the ass.
No burden is heavier to bear than the burden of a false idea.
A mask can hide you from others, but not from yourself.
Talking is good. It’s good to disturb the silence.
Silence stands between the trees, waiting for the wind’s roar.
Behind every mask there is a face, and behind that a story.
Any casual observer can tell at a glance I’m not the person I think I am.
Whatever we may be or seem to others, to ourselves we are always just ourselves
Distance is not a gulf but a bridge between lovers.
A scale can tell what a body weighs, but not its value.
Maybe there is no justice, just different degrees of injustice.
When you transplant a rose, transplant the reddest one.
A gloomy view of things is at least one misfortune you can avoid.
What makes or breaks us ultimately is our attitude toward the things we can’t control.
A broken mirror is good luck if you want it to be.
The true poetic feeling is a feeling of boundless gratitude.
Be grateful to those who refuse your demands. They are your benefactors.
oYu begin with other people’s stories and end up with your own.
You begin with other people’s stories and end up with your own.
Because I took the sun for granted it shone on me.
A man or woman becomes happy by choosing happiness every day.
The woods are full of poison berries but you don’t have to eat them.
The more idealism proves futile, the more I respect idealists.
The great novels are deterrents. A Merck’s manual on how not to live.
What saves us from succumbing to utter meaninglessness is not reason but instinct.
The fish don’t need to know why they’re in the water.
It felt so amazing to be alive I could never think of anything else.
Every leaf before it falls must think itself immortal.
When you enjoy a thought or activity, it’s irrelevant whether it’s meaningful or not.
There is peace in knowing that whatever one thinks it is not the truth.
The earth and sky are like two mirrors facing each other.
The person who knows how to enjoy their own company knows the most important thing.
In solitude every fear, every longing, becomes exaggerated.
Don’t try to create the world in your image-that was God’s mistake.
You get up each morning and do what you can to survive. Nothing else is true, and nothing else matters.
We get up in the morning and do what we must to survive. Nothing else is true, and nothing else matters.
A blind man sees with his cane, like all the rest of us.
What matters finally is how we feel about ourselves. After all, to a worm we’re just food.
There are two kinds of love: the love that is and the love that isn’t.
To sacrifice one’s unhappiness for a good cause is something I fervently believe in.
Happiness requires the ultimate sacrifice: to give up one’s unhappiness.
You say you are disappointed with life. But maybe it is life that’ is disappointed with you.
It’s during a storm that the best songs get written.
Ideas stand in the corner and laugh while we fight over them.
It’s better to develop hobbies and interests than to have ideas about things.
When men set out to create order, they create only misery.
Every human life has infinite value and to destroy even one is a crime against all humanity.
The day you lose your sense of wonder is the day you grow old.
The only real progress in any activity is to love it more and more.
The things that happen in the night are hidden even from the night.
We all talk to ourselves. Those we call mad just talk a little louder.
The spiritual life to me has always meant just one thing: emotion. Emotion is the poetry of life.
The mind’s best trick is the illusion that it exists.
The hardest secret to keep is one you don’t know you have
The problem is not that we can’t answer the great questions, but that we ask them in the first place.
There are no simple solutions to imaginary problems.
The last goose in the column is flying just as high.
How often have our own tears blinded us to the tears of others.
I like paths that lead to no certain end, that keep me wondering where I am.
The world is endlessly fascinating to those who take the time to look.
Artists must remain in a state of awe to remain artists.
There is no end to wonder once one starts really looking.
I still find the moon more amazing than the fact men have walked on it.
To one who loves birds, morning always wakes up singing.
Every line is the perfect length if you don’t measure it.
To remain sane in a mad world is the true victory.
Open your eyes and breathe deeply. Wisdom is in the air.
I have no resentments, no complaints, no ax to grind. I simply feel what I feel and do what I do.
The head follows the feet. We act first and find reasons later.
The love of life begins with the love of one person.
We are fighting now to save that endangered species-the individual.
You have to let the balloon go if you want to see it fly.
It isn’t drugs addicts have to give up. It’s misery.
The thought of death destroys some people and saves others.
A writer’s tragedy: to know all the words and nothing else.
We love to love and feel loved because love is the greatest pleasure of all.
Pretending is one of our greatest pleasures. But you have to know you’re pretending.
There is no sweeter pleasure than wandering aimlessly about.
Passing pleasures, like passing clouds, are all we have.
Enjoying nonsense is one of life’s primal pleasures.
Pleasure, like the sparrow, never sits on any one branch too long.
An avalanche doesn’t look back at the damage it causes.
When you stop expecting miracles, life is the miracle.
We expect miracles from love but love has only itself to give.
You don’t love someone because it’s the logical thing to do.
Geniuses are a dime a dozen. The truly tolerant are rare.
Music is the most abstract of the arts; dance, the most concrete.
Intuition: the feeling you know something when you know nothing.
Sometimes I feel certain that the hyenas are laughing at us.
If I didn’t laugh, absurdity would get the best of me.
Envy expresses itself through condemnation. The louder the condemnation the greater the envy.
More than jealousy or possessiveness pettiness kills love.
A fool who cursed the sun was surprised to see it still shining.
Everything rusts, rots, crumbles, vanishes. The infinite will just take a little bit longer.
Feelings of superiority always stem from an illusion.
It’s fun to invent systems and meanings and then poke holes in them.
I owe my last breath to death but not one breath more.
Rivers are lucky. They can only move in one direction.
When set out to create order, they create only misery.
Things put in the wrong place have found a new place.
A love that requires constant attention is a doomed love.
Love is not insatiable. What is insatiable is the need for love.
The real blessings come without our asking or even knowing what they are.
Life is simple. You just have to stop trying to figure it out.
The game of love is complicated, but love is not complicated.
My wants are so simple I don’t even know what they are.
When an audience shares your prejudices you can always count on their applause.
A poet is someone who never forgets they were born naked.
A poet is a feeling, sentient being, not a word machine.
A heart that can break is better than no heart at all.
Winter gold: the sparrow’s footprints in the snow.
Philosophers tell you what they think. Artists show you.
There is no difference between being an artist and being in love.
What if you have all the pieces and the puzzle still doesn’t fit?
A few names have survived oblivion. In time, oblivion will have them all.
Of all the elements in the periodic table, not a single one is indestructible.
Maturity is the moment one regains one’s innocence.
I’m on the side of whatever keeps the flowers growing.
To put one’s career before one’s personal life is like putting death before life.
Always doubting and questioning everything strikes me as a very miserable way to live.
Each moment cancels the last. In the end there is nothing, not even the end.
Hearts are connected by the slenderest of threads.
We’re all stumbling in the dark, and that makes for some pretty interesting collisions.
Be unprepared, that’s my motto. Be unprepared, and let life overwhelm you.
We need a new religion, a global religion, based on one simple principle: live and let live.
It never ceases to amaze me: the things people care about.
Boredom is the price one pays for not enjoying everything.
It doesn’t matter what Christ or Buddha said, it matters how they lived.
We reach the end of our lives long before we reach the end of ourselves.
An aphorism needn’t be true, but it should sound true.
I love to talk to people who love to talk. The warmth, the energy, the humanity.
Talking to people is the most educational thing I know.
Nothing can come of nothing. There is no room in my world for nothing.
The most important truths are those which sustain us in our daily lives.
To know oneself means above all to know what one likes
One quick glance in the mirror is enough for a lifetime.