It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

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

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

Violence has been Nicaragua’s most important export to the world.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Littera scripta manet – ‚The written word will remain‘. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

I happen to believe there is evil in the world.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

There’s hope for everyone. That’s what makes the world go round.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

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.

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

I restore myself when I’m alone.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

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

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

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

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.

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

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

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

‚Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.