Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late.
One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.
On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die.
Moral philosophy and political economy both condemn the individual who consumes without producing; who fills a place on the earth but does not shed upon it either good or evil,—for evil is sometimes good the meaning of which is not at once made manifest.
It is not the concern of philosophy to produce religion in any individual.
It is a mania common to philosophers of all eras to deny what is, and to explain what is not.[C’est une manie commune aux philosophes de tous les âges de nier ce qui est, et d’expliquer ce qui n’est pas.]
In the world today, only a philosophy of eternity could justify non-violence.
In history, we are concerned with what has been and what is; in philosophy, however, we are concerned not with what belongs exclusively to the past or to the future, but with that which is, both now and eternally — in short, with reason.
How easy it is, Doctor, to be a philosopher on paper, and how difficult in real life![Как легко, доктор, быть философом на бумаге и как это трудно на деле!]
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
Dogmatism and scepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance.
Constant happiness is the philosopher’s stone of the soul.