Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Live your life not celebrating victories, but overcoming defeats.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

In the field of ideas not involving productive activities it is easier to distinguish the division between material and spiritual necessity. For a long time man has been trying to free himself from alienation through culture and art. While he dies every day during the eight or more hours that he sells his labour, he comes to life afterwards in his spiritual activities. But this remedy bears the germs of the same sickness; it is as a solitary individual that he seeks communion with his environment.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, — "Always do what you are afraid to do."

I wonder if I could have been here before as I drive up the Roman road the Theater seems familiar — perhaps I headed a legion up that same white road... I passed a chateau in ruins which I possibly helped escalade in the middle ages. There is no proof nor yet any denial. We were, We are, and we will be. In a letter to his mother from Chamlieu, France during World War I, revealing some of his speculations about reincarnation. (1917-11-20)

If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT.

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed. Here's another one of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life."

A man is made by the books he reads.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.

A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times, may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes of nature.

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

Your goodness must have some edge to it, -- else it is none.

Insist on yourself; never imitate...Every great man is a unique.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.