The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

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

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

Value is what you get.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.

If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

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

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

I thank Marc Jacobs so much for giving me the opportunity to design a shoe for Louis Vuitton, but the thing that broke my heart most was when they said, ‚You’re finished. The shoe’s finished.‘

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

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

The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.

Had I pursued my education long enough to learn all the conventional dos and don’ts of starting a business, I often wonder how different my life and career might have been.

Losers are people who are afraid of losing.

Where there is love there is life.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

I just owe almost everything to my father and it’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

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?

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And it turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

Life’s a rollercoaster. You’re up one minute; you’re down one minute. But who doesn’t like rollercoasters?

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

Some people feel that the world owes them a living.

Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

There’s no happier person than a truly thankful, content person.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone. I’m older – I’m in my early 50s – so you’ll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.