Neel Burton Quotes

Depression: the healthy suspicion that modern life has no meaning and that modern society is absurd and alienating.

There are essentially three types of people: those who love life more than they fear it, those who fear life more than they love it, and those who have no clue what I'm talking about.

A man shrinks or expands into the degree and nature of his ambition. Ambition needs to be cultivated and refined, and yet has no teachers.

Man first creates the universe in his image, and then turns round to say that God created man in his image... As Voltaire quipped, if God created man in his image, man has returned the compliment.

No one ever pays to learn the most important things.

When we stop noticing small things, we are no longer truly alive.

Philosophy gives life to life.

Maths is at only one remove from magic.

A man is rich not only by what he has, but also, and above all, by what he doesn't.

It takes ten good decisions to make up for one disastrous one. This is why it is better not to make nine good decisions than to make one bad one—which is what happens most of the time.

The two greatest warriors are Truth and Time. Be sure to march behind, and not against, them.

A writer is someone who, needing nothing and no one, wants everything and everyone.

Man is mostly a collection of emotions, most of which he would do better not to be feeling.

Xenophobia is when you smile at people and they don't smile back.

Relative poverty is when you have more taste than money.

A genius is no more—and no less—than someone who insists on the truth, while others face the other way.

Many things can prolong your life, but only wisdom can save it.

Drinking turns a fool into a merry fool.

Depression is our way of telling ourselves that something is seriously wrong and needs working through and changing.

Wonder begets culture, which begets yet more wonder, and the end of wonder is wisdom, which is the state of perpetual wonder.

If you say it very softly, with a smile, you can get away with saying almost anything, even the truth.

The three most powerful seasonings are hunger, variety, and gratitude.

Solitude, the joy of being alone, stems from, as well as promotes, a state of maturity and inner richness.

Loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of objective meaning from the universe.

The irony is, nothing is more frightening than being frightened.

One needs to be either more brave or more good, because if courage is lacking goodness can substitute, while cowardice is the deficiency of both.

It is no coincidence that, on all four sides, in all four corners, the borders of the Roman Empire stopped where wine could no longer be made.

An artist is someone who, needing nothing and no one, wants everything and everyone.

Of all funny things, truth is the funniest.

Love is like chickenpox. It's much worse when it comes late.

The problem with studying is that it gets in the way of education.

Love, like madness, can only fill the models that society makes available.

Our life is just as long or short as our remembering: as rich as our imagining, as vibrant as our feeling, and as profound as our thinking.