Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

We moralize among ruins.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

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

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

Oh! Most miserable wretch that I am! Why have I not learnt how to swim?

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

In ‚Changeling,‘ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

As a medical doctor, I have known the face of adversity. I have seen much of death and dying, suffering and sorrow. I also remember the plight of students overwhelmed by their studies and of those striving to learn a foreign language. And I recall the fatigue and frustration felt by young parents with children in need.

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

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

I haven’t written my own epitaph, and I’m not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple, and that it will point people not to me, but to the One I served.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

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

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.