Daniel Klein Quotes & Sayings

When my father-in-law, Jan Vuijst, a Dutch Reformed minister, was on his deathbed, I had a deeply intimate conversation with him - as it turned out, my last conversation with him. He said to me, 'It was a privilege to have lived.' The soulful gratitude of that simple statement will never leave me. — Daniel Klein

I now realize that I habitually fight against a leisurely pace; I resist giving in to slowness. — Daniel Klein

This classmate told me that Plato drove this idea home in his dialogue Euthydemus, in which Socrates puts down the Sophists, claiming that a man learns more by "playing" with ideas in his leisure time that by sitting in a classroom. And Plato's successor, that world champion of pleasure, Epicurus, believed in a simple yet elegant connection between learning and happiness: the entire purpose of education was to attune the mind and sense to the pleasures of life. — Daniel Klein

There is no rest for the striver. Just beyond the completion of each goal on our life-achievement "bucket list" looms another goal, and then another. Meanwhile, of course, the clock is ticking - quite loudly, in fact. We become breathless. And we have no time left for a calm and reflective appreciation of our twilight years, no deliciously long afternoons sitting with friends or listening to music or musing about the story of our lives. And we will never get another chance for that. — Daniel Klein

This, in the end, is the prime purpose of a philosophy: to give us lucid ways to think about the world and how to live in it. — Daniel Klein

With nothing meaningful in life, nothing is interesting. Enter boredom. A bored man even longs for longing. He has time to fill, but there is nothing compelling to do. — Daniel Klein

I am not looking for a thing; I am searching for a spiritual experience. — Daniel Klein

To my surprise, I find the most relevant commentary on a marriage that continues into the sunset years comes from the radical German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who, in an atypically practical frame of mind, wrote, 'When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everthing else in marriage is transitory. — Daniel Klein

Companionship was at the top of Epicurus's list of life's pleasures. He wrote, 'Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship. — Daniel Klein

Loving and being loved affirmed one's sense of self and conquered feelings of loneliness and alienation. It kept one sane. — Daniel Klein

Oscar Wilde: In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the — Daniel Klein

It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but everything that happens happens for no real reason. — Daniel Klein

I still take great pleasure in playing around with philosophical questions, the ones that [Bertrand] Russell is the first to admit have no unequivocal answers. . . . I guess this quality makes me a Cerebral Hedonist, although some would say it makes me a mental masochist. — Daniel Klein

I wonder if I have a problem. I definitely have a tendency to seek spiritual inspiration from super-rational thinkers rather than from rabbis and priests and theologians. — Daniel Klein