“The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.”
Confucius · The Analects, Book VII
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Philosophy Quotes
180 quotes on philosophy and the big questions — from the classics to the everyday.
“He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
Confucius · The Analects, Book II
“Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.”
Confucius · The Analects, Book II, c. 5th century BCE
“He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book VI A
“The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book VII B
“To act without clear understanding, to form habits without examining them, to follow a path all your life without knowing where it goes — this is the behavior of the multitude.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book VII A
“The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book VI B
“The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame is the beginning of righteousness.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book II A
“Benevolence is the heart of man, and righteousness is the path of man.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book VI A
“A man must first despise himself, and then others will despise him.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book IV A
“He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature. Knowing his nature, he knows Heaven.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book VII A
“The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart.”
Mencius · Mencius, Book IV B, c. 4th century BCE
“You are not the oil, you are not the air, merely the point of combustion between them.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald · The Crack-Up, 1936
“Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.”
Benjamin Disraeli · Vivian Grey, 1826
“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
Plutarch · Moralia, c. 100 AD
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
William Shakespeare · Julius Caesar, c. 1599
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard · The Writing Life, 1989
