Photo taken at Pompeii, Italy
What Is True?
In high school, I appreciated a peculiar coincidence that my philosophy teacher resembled the stereotypical deep thinker of Ancient Greece. I mean, he didn’t wear any robes that symbolized wisdom, but he did sport the quintessential long beard you might expect in any film set in the BC period range.
In all honesty, he looked like Socrates to me. I wonder if it played a role in my curiosity about the subject, with his uncanny likeness to one of the most iconic founding figures of the field distracting for me at first.
Whether it was a calculated move or not, it set the tone for my introduction to philosophy itself—a challenging matter widely known for extremely complex ideas, difficult to even wrap your head around. Yet while I found the class intriguing, I could hardly ignore those who scoffed at the whole approach in their obvious preference for material based on measurable certainty.
Even today, I understand why some lose interest in theoretical activities altogether. With so much going on in our lives already, the last thing I imagine is for people harboring any secret desire to spend their days thinking about thinking.
Because what’s the point of analyzing insights when you could just stick to the facts? What’s the point of exploring a multitude of questions when you could just focus on the answers?
What purpose could you possibly gain from shifting your attention from “What happened?” to “What is true?” As complicated as it sounds, life is hard enough as it is without knowing where you stand.
Having a philosophy of life serves as a personal compass that provides direction, meaning, and resilience; it’s the kind of thing that can keep you functional in a dysfunctional world. That said, here are 30 quotes from various books of life lessons out there to get you started on finding yours.
“Don’t you think it’s better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”
― Plato, The Symposium
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, ‘So what. My mother didn’t love me. So what. My husband won’t ball me. So what. I’m a success but I’m still alone. So what.’ I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.”
― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
“A good will is good not because of what it effects, or accomplishes, not because of its fitness to attain some intended end, but good just by its willing, i.e. in itself; and, considered by itself, it is to be esteemed beyond compare much higher than anything that could ever be brought about by it in favor of some inclinations, and indeed, if you will, the sum of all inclinations. Even if by some particular disfavor of fate, or by the scanty endowment of a stepmotherly nature, this will should entirely lack the capacity to carry through its purpose; if despite its greatest striving it should still accomplish nothing, and only the good will were to remain (not of course, as a mere wish, but as the summoning of all means that are within our control); then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has full worth in itself.”
― Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
“In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“And therefore if the head and the body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first and essential thing. And the care of the soul, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms are fair words; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance comes and stays, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole body.”
― Socrates, Essential Thinkers
“As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point on the circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
“A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
― John Keats, Letters of John Keats
“Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based upon what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with—and so are you. Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.”
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
“To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
“We like to think we react to the world as it is, when really we react to a world that exists in our own minds. This inner world is so powerful, it overwhelms our ability to see reality. John Milton, in Paradise Lost, expressed it this way: “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”
― Phil Stutz, The Tools
“The energy we put out in the world is the energy we get back. So if you want more love in your life, set your intention to be more loving. If you seek kindness, focus your energy on empathy and compassion. Conversely, if you wonder why there are so many angry people in your life, look no further than the resentment you hold in your own heart.”
― Oprah Winfrey, The Wisdom of Sundays
“Why therefore should we hesitate any longer to grant to it the movement which accords naturally with its firm, rather than put the whole world in a commotion—the world whose limits we do not and cannot know? And why not admit that the appearance of daily revolution belongs to the heavens but the reality belongs to the Earth?”
― Nicolaus Copernicus, On The Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres
“The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.”
― Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
“Also, go inside and listen to your body, because your body will never lie to you. Your mind will play tricks, but the way you feel in your heart, in your guts, is the truth.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being formed by the likewise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One.”
― Isaac Newton, The Principia
“Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
“It’s all in the view. That’s what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you’d better make every second count.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
“‘The whole world is beautiful, Belgarion,’ Eriond assured him in response to that unspoken thought. ‘You just have to know how to look at it.’”
― David Eddings, King of the Murgos
“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies
Finding Your Why
We gain so much from reading about the philosophies of others, the books of life lessons that allow us to test things out for ourselves and ask the important questions. What do I see? What am I missing? What feels true for me?
Personally, I think it’s the kind of work that never ends in an ongoing alchemy from passive existence into intentional living. But while we never know if we fully arrive at the “right” answers, my hunch is you get closer and closer to figuring out your why—your purpose and the kind of person you eventually can’t help but aspire to be.
