Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

If it’s a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

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

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

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

Little things affect little minds.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.