The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Single life is so overrated.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked on the heart of the element by the psychical convergence of the universe upon itself.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.

I love being a dad. I just love it.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

I want to marry Arline because I love her – which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

I don’t have to ‚freedom-kiss‘ my wife when what I really want to do is French-kiss her.

I was fortunate and I was lucky that I had a couple of people in my life who cared about me. I had good, loving parents.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

No one loves the man whom he fears.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

If you like it you should enjoy it! Moderation in everything. If there’s things you really love, you should enjoy. You get one life, so you should enjoy it.

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

I love Manchester. Everyone knows that – I have said it many times. Manchester is in my heart.

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

I was in Europe and it was at this stage that I fell in love with Americans in uniform. And I continue to have that love affair.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

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

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.