The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action.

We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.

Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust, and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt that crime logically should produce but actually does not.

Contradiction itself, far from always being a criterion of error, is sometimes a sign of truth.