Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

I read poetry to save time.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

If you would judge, understand.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

History is written by the victors.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

My experience is listen, see, feel – and then think about what you change.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.