1. “A leader is the wave pushed ahead by the ship.”
2. "All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."
3. “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
4. “A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction.”
5. ”A modern branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of dealing with the infinitely small, can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion, which used to appear insoluble. This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing with problems of motion, admits the conception of the infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when dealing with separate elements of motion instead of examining continuous motion. In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable human wills, is continuous. To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history. Only by taking an infinitesimally small unit for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of man) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.”
6. “Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.”
7. “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”
8. “A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.”
9. "Boredom: the desire for desires."
10. "Conceit is incompatible with understanding."
11. "Do you now understand," continued the old man, "that Lailie is you, and the warriors you put to death were you also? And not the warriors only, but the animals which you slew when hunting and ate at your feasts were also you. You thought life dwelt in you alone but I have drawn aside the veil of delusion, and have let you see that by doing evil to others you have done it to yourself also. Life is one in them all, and yours is but a portion of this same common life. And only in that one part of life that is yours, can you make life better or worse -- increasing or decreasing it. You can only improve life in yourself by destroying the barriers that divide your life from that of others, and by considering others as yourself, and loving them. By so doing you increase your share of life. You injure your life when you think of it as the only life, and try to add to its welfare at the expense of other lives. By so doing you only lessen it. To destroy the life that dwells in others is beyond your power. The life of those you have slain has vanished from your eyes, but is not destroyed. You thought to lengthen your own life and to shorten theirs, but you cannot do this. Life knows neither time nor space. The life of a moment, and the life of a thousand years: your life and the life of all the visible and invisible beings in the world, are equal. To destroy life, or to alter it, is impossible; for life is the one thing that exists. All else, but seems to us to be."
12. ”Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.”
13. “Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.”
14. "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
15. “He had heard that women often love plain ordinary men, but he did not believe it, because he judged by himself and he could only love beautiful mysterious exceptional women.”
16. ”He only saw her clear, truthful eyes, timid with the same bliss of love that flooded his own heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer, dazzling him with their light of love.”
17. “He was nine years old and quite a child, but he knew his soul, it was dear to him, and he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and never let anyone enter his heart without the key of love.”
18. "I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor."
19. “...I could give no reasonable meaning to any actions of my life. And I was very surprised that I had not understood this from the very beginning. My state of mind was as if some wicked and stupid jest was being played upon me by some one. One can live only so long as one is intoxicated, drunk with life; but when one grows sober one cannot fail to see that is is all a stupid cheat. What is truest about it is that there is nothing even funny or silly in it; it is cruel and stupid, purely and simply.”
20. ”If you want to be happy, be.”
21. “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
22. “If one loves, one loves the whole person as he or she is, and not as one might wish them to be.”
23. “If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.”
24. “If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”
25. “If you are content with the old world, try to preserve it, it is very sick and cannot hold out much longer. But if you cannot bear to live in everlasting dissonance between your beliefs and your life, thinking one thing and doing another, get out of the medieval whited sepulchers, and face your fears. I know very well it is not easy.”
26. “I knew not the light, and I thought there was no sure truth in life; but when I perceived that only light enables men to live, I sought to find the sources of the light . . . And when I reached this source of light I was dazzled with the splendor, and I found there full answers to my questions as to the purpose of the lives of myself and others.”
27. “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
28. “I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.”
29. “In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.”
30. “It is by those who have suffered that the world has been advanced.”
31. “Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.”
32. “Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.”
33. "Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source."
34. “Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith.”
35. “Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.”
36. “Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will be--the tragedy of the bedroom.”
37. “Only those live who do good.”
38. "Our body is a machine for living. It is geared towards it, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will be more effective than if you paralyse it by encumbering it with remedies."
39. “The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.”
40. “The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.”
41. “The creation and sale of most art today is pure prostitution. The comparison is true in every detail. Real art can only rarely be created even by a real artist; like a child in a mother's womb, it is the ripened fruit of his prior life. False art, though, can be ceaselessly produced by craftsmen, according to the dictates of a market. Like a faithful wife who loves her husband, real art does not need any excess decoration; like a prostitute, false art demands to be decorated. True art comes out of an artist's urgent need to express the feelings that have formed inside him, just as a mother needs to give birth to her baby. False art answers only to profit. Real art brings new feelings into our life, as a woman brings a new person into the world. False art corrupts; it makes a person dissipated, distracts him, weakens his spiritual power. Everyone must understand this, in order that they shun the terrible proliferation of this dirty, dissipated type of art which is, on its face, prostitution.”
42. “The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.”
43. "The only thing that we can know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom."
44. “The problem of the meaning of life is intractable, but life's purpose becomes very simple when we ask ourselves what we should do.”
45. "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."
46. “To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.”
47. “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”
48. “True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception.”
49. “Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”
50. “War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.”
51. "We lost because we told ourselves we lost."
52. “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.”
53. “Without knowing why I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”
54. “Would reason ever have proved to me that I must love my neigbour instead of strangling him? I was told that in my childhood and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law demanding that I should strangle all who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbour reason could never discover, because it's unreasonable.”
