René Descartes

I think; therefore I am.

Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,’ you just scream.

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It’s thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Without passion, you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.