“Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.” — Erich Maria Remarque

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” — C. S. Lewis

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” — Virginia Woolf

“I didn’t like having to explain to them, so I just shut up, smoked a cigarette, and looked at the sea.” — Albert Camus

“Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.” — Ambrose Bierce

“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.” — Kahlil Gibran

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.” — Charles Bukowski

“Nobody's so damn well educated that you can't learn ninety percent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten percent is decoration.” — Kurt Vonnegut

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“One must dare to be happy.” — Gertrude Stein

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” — Albert Camus

“Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.” — Eric Hoffer

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” — Sylvia Plath

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” — Robert Frost

“Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.” — Robertson Davies

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” — Vincent van Gogh

“Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.” — Albert Camus

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” — Bertrand Russell

“The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.” — Margaret Atwood

“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.” — Virginia Woolf

“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” — Douglas Adams

“Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.” — Alain de Botton

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” — Eugène Ionesco

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” — Simone Weil

“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.” — Alan Watts

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” — James Baldwin

“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.” — Albert Camus

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.” — Charles Bukowski

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” — Oscar Wilde

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.” — Anaïs Nin

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” — Leo Tolstoy

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” — C. S. Lewis

“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.” — Franz Kafka

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” — Thornton Wilder

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” — bell hooks

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” — Albert Camus

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” — Isaac Asimov

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” — J. R. R. Tolkien

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.” — Aldous Huxley

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” — Carl Jung

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.” — Hermann Hesse

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” — Marie Curie

“In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone.” — Hunter S. Thompson

“Find what you love and let it kill you.” — Charles Bukowski

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” — Victor Hugo

“In a sense, I'm the one who ruined me: I did it myself.” — Haruki Murakami

“People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” — Aldous Huxley