Philosopher Quotes on Life

“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.”

The universe is flux, life is opinion.

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

Meditations, Book II | II, 11

“Consider thyself to be dead , and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”

Meditations, Book VII | Variant: Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. VII, 56

“Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?”

Meditations, Book IX | IX, 21

“Live as on a mountain. ...Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus.”

Meditations, Book X | X, 15

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”

Reddite igitur, patres conscripti, ei vitam, cui ademistis. Vita enim mortuorum in memoria est posita vivorum.

“Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.”

Nam et secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.

“History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice, but the orator's, can entrust her to immortality?”

De Oratore–On the Orator(55 BC) | Book II, Chapter 9, section 36

“Restore life then, Conscript Fathers, to him, from whom you have taken it away. The life of the dead is in the memory of the living.”

Philippicae–Philippics(44 BC) | Philippica IX, 10; translation of William Duncan

“Shortened Version: We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.”

De Natura Deorum–On the Nature of the Gods(45 BC) | Book I, section 6

“Hell is other people.”

Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru... vous vous rappelez: le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... ah! Quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril, l'enfer, c'est les autres.

“Existence precedes essence.”

L'existence précède et commande l'essence.

“Man is condemned to be free.”

Existentialism Is a Humanism, 1946

“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

Nausea, 1938

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

p. 41

“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”

Letters to Lucilius, 1

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”

Aliquando enim et vivere fortiter facere est

“Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.”

Letter CVI: On the corporeality of virtue | Line 12

“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough.”

Moral Essays | De Brevitate Vitae ("On the Shortness of Life", trans. John W. Basore), Ch. 1

“Pyrrhus: No law the wretched captive's life doth spare. Agamemnon: What law forbids not, let this shame forbid. Pyrrhus: 'Tis victor's right to do whate'er he will. Pyrrhus: Then should he will the least who most can do.”

Troades(The Trojan Women) | lines 333-336

“The best is the enemy of the good.”

Il est triste que souvent, pour être bon patriote, on soit l'ennemi du reste des hommes.

“Let us cultivate our garden.”

Candide, closing line

“Satire lies about men of letters during their life, and eulogy after their death.”

A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 105

“A single part of physics occupies the lives of many men, and often leaves them dying in uncertainty.”

1730s | "A Madame la Marquise du Châtelet, Avant-Propos", Eléments de Philosophie de Newton (1738)

“Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.”

1760s | Letter to Pierre-Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain (21 October 1769), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1882], vol. XIV, letter # 7692 (p. 478)

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Original French: La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. | Variant translation: The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

O light ! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer .

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.”

Original French: La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. | Variant translation: The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy.

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”

Notebooks 1935-1942

“I rebel; therefore we exist.”

The Rebel (L'Homme Revolte), 1951

“Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

At ego adulescens miser ualde, miser in exordio ipsius adulescentiae, etiam petieram a te castitatem et dixeram, 'Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.

“The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond comparison. There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity; instead of life, eternity.”

The City of God(early 400s) | Book II, Chapter 29

“As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.”

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 277

“You can live, provided you live; that is, you can live for ever, provided you live a good life.”

Sermons | 229H:3:2

Attributed to Augustine of Hippo:

“Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”

What I Believe, 1925

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”

Marriage and Morals, 1929

“I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.”

Greek Exercises (1888); at the age of fifteen, Russell used to write down his reflections in this book, for fear that his people should find out what he was thinking.

“I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”

Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.

“It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.”

Sceptical Essays(1928) | Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda

“Hitch your wagon to a star.”

Civilization

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

November 11, 1842

“Life is too short to waste The critic bite or cynic bark, Quarrel, or reprimand; 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!”

Poems(1847) | To J. W. , st. 4

“Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Tho' her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive, Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive.”

Poems(1847) | Give All to Love , st. 4

“Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent: All are needed by each one, Nothing is fair or good alone.”

Poems(1847) | Each and All , st. 1

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour.”

Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 1, p. 257.

“In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.”

Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 17, Section IV, pg. 581.

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.”

The German Ideology(1845-1846) | Volume I; Part 1; "Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook"; Section A, "Idealism and Materialism ".

“Capital is dead labor, that vampire -like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”

Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 1, p. 257.

“Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth,it buys as long as it has the means to buy.”

Das Kapital(Buch II)(1893) | Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 449.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.

“Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave.”

...никогда Христос ... ни одним словом не утверждал личное воскресение и бессмертие личности за гробом...

“To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.”

War and Peace(1865–1867; 1869) | Bk. XIV, ch. 15

“When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by .”

What Men Live By(1881) | Ch. XI

“The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God ; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.”

The Kingdom of God is Within You(1894) | Chapter XII , Conclusion—Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand Variant translation: The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God,

“Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.”

Ch. 10. Of Managing the Will

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

Si, avons nous beau monter sur des échasses, car sur des échasses encore faut-il marcher de nos jambes. Et au plus élevé trône du monde, si ne sommes assis que sur notre cul.

“There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book II, Ch. 11. Of Cruelty

“Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.”

Book I | Book I, Ch. 40. Of Good and Evil (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842)

“There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws , he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”

Book III

“Alas for this life so light, beware of this slumber so heavy, O soul seek the Beloved, O friend seek the Friend O watchman be wakeful; it behoves not a watchman to sleep.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 88, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson)

“Ah! O crow, give up this life and live anew! In view of God’s changes cast away your life! Choose the new, give up the old, For each single present year is better than three past.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 122 (Whinfield)

“Prize not at all life that has passed without love, Love is the water of life: receive it in thy heart and soul.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | pp. 288–9, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson)

“Thou wilt never more endure without the flame, when thou hast known the rapture of burning. If the water of life should come to thee, it would not stir thee from the flame.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 60, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson)

Attributed to Rumi:

“What you seek is seeking you.”

“Repeated throughout his life, see: Quote Investigator”

❝Everything should be made simple as possible but no simpler.❞

“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.”

Einstein and the Poet(1983) | p. 142

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

1950s | Letter to Hans Muehsam (9 July 1951), Einstein Archives 38-408, quoted in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010) by Alice Calaprice, p. 404

“What is significant in one's own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?”

Out of My Later Years(1950) | Ch. 2 "Self-Portrait" (1936), p. 5

“Hail to the man who went through life always helping others, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien. Such is the stuff of which the great moral leaders are made.”

Essay to Leo Baeck(1953) | The New Quotable Einstein variant translation from Ideas and Opinions : "I salute the man who is going through life always helpful, knowing no fear, and to whom aggressiveness and resentment are alien

“Arise, awake, and stop not until the goal is reached.”

Public Addresses

“And may I ask you, Europeans, what country you have ever raised to better conditions? Wherever you have found weaker races, you have exterminated them by the roots, as it were. You have settled on their lands and they are gone forever. What is the history of your America, your Australia and New Zealand, your Pacific Islands and South Africa? Where are those aboriginal races there today? They are all exterminated, you have killed them outright, as if they were wild beasts. It is only where you have not the power to do so, and there only, that other nations are still alive.”

Swami Vivekananda Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

“A perfect life is a contradiction in terms.”

Swâmi Vivekânanda on Râja Yoga (1899), Ch. VI : Pratyâhâra and Dhâraṇâ

“Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat.”

Call to the Nation

“To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.”

Pearls of Wisdom

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

We but mirror the world . All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body . If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.

“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans , who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

Address given in Bombay (26 September 1896), Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , Vol. 1, p. 410 (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes.

“The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence . The secret of happy life lies in renunciation . Renunciation is life. Indulgence spells death.”

1940s | Harijan , (24 February 1946), p. 19

“For one man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”

1920s | Young India (27 January 1927)

“Now when we talk of brotherhood of men, we stop there and feel that all other life is there for man to exploit for his own purposes. But Hinduism excludes all exploitation.”

1920s | Young India (26 December 1926)

“Work alone is noble.”

Bk. III, ch. 4.

“My Own Four Walls” (c. 1825) Froude, James Anthony (1882). Thomas Carlyle: A history of the first forty years of his life, 1795-1835 . p. 189. OCLC 603024 .”

Not all his men may sever this, It yields to friends ', not monarchs ', calls; My whinstone house my castle is — I have my own four walls.

“The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.”

The life of Friedrich Schiller : Comprehending an examination of his works (1825).

“The life of Friedrich Schiller : Comprehending an examination of his works (1825).”

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind.

“It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts .”

Letter to His Wife (1835).

“Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces ! Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb? All things are alive in your sacred walls Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.”

Roman Elegies(1789) | Elegy 1

“To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence — this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.”

Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre(Apprenticeship)(1786–1830) | Bk. VII, Ch. 5

Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”

Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”

“Chance seldom interferes with the wise man; his greatest and highest interests have been, are, and will be, directed by reason throughout his whole life . (16).”

Sovereign Maxims

“Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life , by far the most important is friendship . (28)”

Sovereign Maxims

“Justice respects man as living in society, and is the common bond without which no society can subsist.”

Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers(Half-Hours with the Freethinkers)

“Since it is every man's interest to be happy through the whole of life, it is the wisdom of every one to employ philosophy in the search of felicity without delay; and there cannot be a greater folly, than to be always beginning to live.”

Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers(Half-Hours with the Freethinkers)

“Gentleness, as opposed to an irascible temper, greatly contributes to the tranquility and happiness of life, by preserving the mind from perturbation, and arming it against the assaults of calumny and malice.”

Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers(Half-Hours with the Freethinkers)

“Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness (1788; 1791)”

Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason ; but, as this task requires more judgment than generally falls to the lot of parents, substitutes must be sought for, and medicines given, when regimen would have answered the purpose much better. I believe those who examine their own minds, will readily agree with me, that reason, with difficulty, conquers settled hab

“I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind — my wayward heart creates its own misery — Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child — long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.”

Undated letter to Joseph Johnson (October? 1792), published in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), edited by Janet Todd , p. 206.

“Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.”

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman(1792) | Dedication

“The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.”

The French Revolution , Bk. V, ch. 4 (1794)

Attributed to Mary Wollstonecraft:

“I am tired of moving from bad to worse, when one quiet moment with a frank, faithful man would be a treasure.”

“Our time in this world is a journey through the cycle we call life. As guests, we linger for a while in this realm before we depart for another. And who can tell how long this traveler will stay in the next realm before embarking on another visit to the realm of the living?”

Wikiquote

“Travel is such a wonderful experience! Especially when you forget you are traveling. Then you will enjoy whatever you see and do. Those who look into themselves when they travel will not think about what they see. In fact, there is no distinction between the viewer and the seen. You experience everything with the totality of yourself, so that every blade of grass, every mountain, every lake is alive and is a part of you.”

Wikiquote

“Life and death will come of their own. Why be greedy about life and afraid of death?”

Passage 70:The King Who Wanted to Live Forever

“When you live, you should accept life and let it run its course. When you die, you should accept death and go to it peacefully.”

Passage 79:Everyone Must Die Sometime

“Life and death come by themselves. We should let them run their course and not try to speed or delay them.”

Passage 79:Everyone Must Die Sometime

“All that I had loved during my life rose up like a graveyard of white tombs, in a lunar, spectral light. Fundamentally, this graveyard was a brothel. The funereal marble was alive. In some places it had hair on it.”

Wikiquote

“Life is whole only when it isn’t subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way, the essence of entirety is freedom.”

On Nietzsche(1945) | p. xxvii

“The total person is first disclosed … in areas of life that are lived frivolously.”

On Nietzsche(1945) | p. xxix

“Against this rising tide of murder, far more incisive than life (because blood is more resplendent in death than in life), it will be impossible to set anything but trivialities – the comic entreaties of old ladies.”

Blue of the Noon(1935)

Attributed to Georges Bataille:

“Eroticism is the assenting to life up to the point of death.”

“The free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”

Homo liber de nulla re minus, quam de morte cogitat, et ejus sapientia non mortis, sed vitae meditatio est.

“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

Et sane arduum debet esse, quod adeo raro reperitur. Qui enim posset fieri, si salus in promptu esset et sine magno labore reperiri posset, ut ab omnibus fere negligeretur? Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt.

“If you find the light of Scripture clearer than the light of reason (which also is given us by divine wisdom), you are doubtless right in your own conscience in making your reason yield. For my part, since I plainly confess that I do not understand the Scriptures, though I have spent many years upon them, and since I know that when once I have a firm proof I cannot by any course of thought come to”

Letter to William van Blyenbergh (1665) as quoted by Sir Frederick Pollock , Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880) pp. 50-51

“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”

Ethics(1677)

“Spinoza helps me to see myself objectively. This makes life bearable even in experiencing suffering; and with the teachings from the Ethics the world is perceived as manageable.”

Daniel Barenboim | Daniel Barenboim , " The Purpose of the State is Freedom " (DanielBarenboim.com, December 2003)

“Thus society is born, as something required by nature, and (because this nature is human nature) as something accomplished through a work of reason and will, and freely consented to. Man is a political animal, which means that the human person craves political life, communal life, not only with regard to the family community, but with regard to the civil community.”

The Rights of Man (1945). London: Geoffrey Bles, pp. 7–8.

“The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet.”

Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” Sewanee Review , LVI (Winter, 1948), pp. 3-4.

“Action: the Perfection of Human Life,” Sewanee Review , LVI (Winter, 1948), pp. 3-4.”

The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet.

“The supernatural light of the spirit is the only night from which the spirit can emerge alive.”

Ransoming the Time(1941) | p. 288.

“There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.”

True Humanism(1938) | p. xi.

“All real living is meeting.”

Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.

“Life , in that it is life, necessarily entails justice .”

Politics and Morality" in Be'ayot (April 1945), as published in A Land of Two Peoples : Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (1983) edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr, p. 169

“To win a truly great life for the people of Israel , a great peace is necessary, not a fictitious peace, the dwarfish peace that is no more than a feeble intermission, but a true peace with the neighboring peoples, which alone can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as the vanguard of the awakening Near East.”

Our Reply" (September 1945), as published in A Land of Two Peoples : Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (1983) edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr, p. 178 | Variant translation: Only a true peace with neighboring peoples can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as a vanguard of the awakening of the Near East.

“In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself.”

What is Man? (1938) | p. 150

“Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless — when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.”

I and Thou(1923)