“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
Seneca · On the Shortness of Life
Category
← Back to top
Philosophy Quotes
360 quotes on philosophy and the big questions — from the classics to the everyday.
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Confucius
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”
Henry David Thoreau · Letter to Harrison Blake, 1848
“The monkeys aren't blind. They're careful about what they agree to carry.”
Original
“I'm not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.”
The Cheshire Cat · Popularly attributed to the Cheshire Cat, not in Carroll's original text
“How do you know I'm mad? said Alice. You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here.”
The Cheshire Cat · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865
“The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
Alice · Through the Looking-Glass, 1871
“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”
Humpty Dumpty · Through the Looking-Glass, 1871
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”
Alice · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865
“We're all mad here.”
The Cheshire Cat · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865
“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.”
Socrates
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
Bertrand Russell · What I Believe
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde · The Soul of Man Under Socialism
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates · Plato's Apology
