quotes of day Thursday, October 8, 2026

“No one may shut his eyes to think the pain, which is therefore not visible to him, is non-existent.”

“But who would dare condemn me in this world with no judges, where no one is innocent!”

“The Chinese word Li may therefore be understood as organic order, as distinct from mechanical or legal order, both of which go by the book. Li is the asymmetrical, nonrepetitive, and unregimented order which we find in the patterns of moving water, the form of trees and clouds, of frost crystals on the window, or the scattering of pebbles on beach sand.”

“Education is not received. It is achieved.”

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”

“The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”

“I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion.”

“Study as though you cannot catch up to it, and as though you fear you are going to lose it.”

“I recently had my annual physical examination, which I get once every seven years, and when the nurse weighed me, I was shocked to discover how much stronger the Earth's gravitational pull has become since 1990.”

“I've always been fascinated by everything with wings.”

“I always wished for this, but it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.”

“My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.”

“Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”

“Look the world straight in the eye.”

“All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time.”

“What Can I Tell You about Myself which You Have Not Already Found Out from Those Who Do Not Lie?”