The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him? ~Chuang Tzu

A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure. ~Lee Segall

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. ~Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~Andre Gide

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. ~Aesop

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying. ~Baba Ram Dass

I am a part of all that I have met. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

There's more to the truth than just the facts. ~Author Unknown

Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day. ~Polish Proverb

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~Ludwig Börne

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky? ~Stanislaw J. Lec

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. ~Edward R. Murrow

We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it. ~Albert Szent-Györgyi

When the student is ready, the master appears. ~Buddhist Proverb

A gun gives you the body, not the bird. ~Henry David Thoreau

How can anyone be truly enlightened, when the truth is so poorly lit? ~Author Unknown

Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. ~Zen Buddhist Proverb

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~Henry David Thoreau

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying. ~Charles C. Finn

Oh, Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry a future Ghost within us; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! ~Thomas Carlyle

Knock on the sky and listen to the sound. ~Zen Saying

You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough. ~William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science. ~Henry David Thoreau

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. ~Henri Louis Bergson

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter. ~G.C. Lichtenberg

Don't miss the donut by looking through the hole. ~Author Unknown

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. ~Navajo Proverb

Whenever you fall, pick something up. ~Oswald Avery

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind. ~John Lancaster Spalding

No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head. ~Terry Josephson

If you're going to tickle, use a feather not a whip. ~Tas Soft Wind

He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form. ~Marcus Aurelius

If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. ~Russian Proverb

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. ~Bertrand Russell

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. ~Roger Miller

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. ~James Thurber

You cannot step into the same river twice. ~Heraclitus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases. ~Hippocrates, Aphorisms

It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place. ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1872

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. ~Author Unknown

You can see a lot by just looking. ~Yogi Berra

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. ~Leo Rosten

A thousand men can't undress a naked man. ~Greek Proverb

We often repent the good we have done as well as the ill. ~William Hazlitt, Characteristics, 1823

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground. ~Buddha

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. ~Santayana, Essays

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~Niels Bohr

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? ~Maurice Freehill

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden, 1854

The road was new to me, as roads always are going back. ~Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country Road of Pointed Firs, 1896

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about "and." ~Arthur Stanley Eddington

No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. ~Zen

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. ~Eric Berne

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken. ~Aristotle

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different. ~Aldous Huxley

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. ~Georg Hegel

We are spirits clad in veils. ~Christopher P. Cranch

If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am? ~John Lancaster Spalding

Beware the fury of a patient man. ~John Dryden, Absolam and Achitophel, 1680

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. ~Francis Bacon

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting. ~Stanislaus I of Poland

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. ~H.L. Mencken

The future influences the present just as much as the past. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. ~John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911

One does what one is; one becomes what one does. ~Robert von Musil, Kleine Prosa

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice. ~William James

You can't fall off the floor. ~Author Unknown

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. ~Author Unknown

In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it - the present, that is to say, must have become the past - before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future. ~Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. ~Robert M. Pirsig

A stumble may prevent a fall. ~English Proverb

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. ~Friedrich Nietzche

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. ~Matsuo Basho

Philosophy is nothing but common sense in a dress suit. ~Author Unknown

Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself. ~Socrates, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics. ~Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy. ~Martin L. Gross, A Call for Revolution, 1993

When I study philosophical works I feel I am swallowing something which I don't have in my mouth. ~Albert Einstein

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. ~Bertrand Russell

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. ~Thomas Hobbes

The only difference between graffiti and philosophy is the word "fuck." ~Author Unknown

Philosophy is just a hobby. You can't open a philosophy factory. ~Dewey Selmon

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. ~Louisa May Alcott, in Life, Letters, and Journals, ed. E.D. Cheney, 1889

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. ~Alfred North Whitehead

If everybody contemplates the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera. ~John Rich

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both - a philosopher. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution. ~Robert Zend

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck. ~Immanuel Kant

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations. ~Aldous Huxley, Themes and Variations, 1950

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines. ~Bertrand Russell

To teach how to live with uncertainty, yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do. ~Bertrand Russell

If you've never met a student from the University of Chicago, I'll describe him to you. If you give him a glass of water, he says, "This is a glass of water. But is it a glass of water? And if it is a glass of water, why is it a glass of water?" And eventually he dies of thirst. ~Shelley Berman

What is the first business of philosophy? To part with self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks that he already knows. ~Epictetus, Discourses

Philosophy is a state of fermentation, a process without final outcome. ~Esa Saarinen

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize. ~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -
Unweave a rainbow.
~John Keats, "Lamia," 1819

Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel. ~Author Unknown

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of another boy. ~Woody Allen

Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold and dung. Before you understand it, it's like gold; after you understand it, it's like dung. ~Zen Saying

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. ~La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary