The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. And yet it is precisely in the collision between our designs and reality's indifference that character is forged — not in triumph, but in the willingness to begin again.

The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. To that indifference, the only dignified response is to burn with a hard, gem-like flame.

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.

We are not troubled by things, but by the opinions which we have of things. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never blame others, but ourselves — that is, our own opinions.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves. And yet we cannot make peace with ourselves by turning away from the world; we can only do it by turning more deeply into it.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members, and the bond of union is reason itself.

It is not given to the world to be content; it is given to us to be content with the world. But there is a deeper discontent which is divine — the dissatisfaction of the possible with the actual.

The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings, as the barometer is the obedient servant of the air at rest, and the weathercock of the air in motion.

We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do; therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public events or attending to private ones. There is never a moment when new distress is not succeeding old.

We are always getting ready to live, but never living. The vague promises of the future are enough to keep us tethered to the present without ever fully inhabiting it.

It is not the magnitude of our actions but the place they hold in our lives that gives them their character. Thus the smallest good act today is the conquest of the whole future.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.

It is not length of life, but depth of life. Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

The universe is transformation; life is opinion. If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness. The more we have, the less we are masters of what we have, and the more we are enslaved to it.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.

It is a very hard undertaking to seek to please everybody; and I think it wiser to content a few, and let the multitude go whistle for what they get from me.

We are caught in a paradox: the more we study the conditions of courage, the more we see how few people have ever been free enough from want and fear to practice it. Courage is not a virtue but a grace — and perhaps the rarest of all.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in so far as it stands ready against the accidental and the unforeseen, and is not apt to fall.

It is not length of life, but depth of life. Cut these questionings short, and accept the universe as it is, and work in it rather than to understand it.

It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without being worsted.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.

It is not by lying still in the dark and letting himself be gnawed that a man finds rest; but by watching over himself, and bravely bearing the strokes of existence.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

We are faces of the same humanity, and what injures one of us injures all of us; accordingly, let us stretch out our hands to those who have fallen. Above all, let us stretch them out as widely as possible, for those who have fallen farthest.

The universe is not cruel, nor is it kind — it is simply what it is, and we are the creatures who discovered sorrow by learning to want what it cannot give us.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. And it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.

It is not length of life, but depth of life. The way to make life worth living is not to guard the hours, but to fill them — not to preserve the days, but to use them.

The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.

We are always getting ready to live, but never living. The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

The mark of the historic is that the present moment always will have been. What we do now is irrevocable—it joins the permanent record of what has occurred, and in that sense the past is the only thing that cannot be taken from us.

We are all loosely fastened to the world, and to the opinions of others. The man who has learned to detach himself from things and from persons, and who has ceased to care overmuch about his own continuity, is in the best position to think clearly.

We shall make mistakes; and I venture to affirm that it is better to make every possible mistake, and to correct them all, than to be paralyzed by the fear of making any.

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.