Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

I’m married. My wife, Stella – a beautiful woman. She’s brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.

I’m inconsistent, even to myself.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.

Observe all men, thyself most.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Commonsense is the realised sense of proportion.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

It is easy to dismiss the world as ‚irrelevant,‘ or consumed by ‚paranoid anti-Americanism,‘ but perhaps not wise.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

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

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

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

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

I owe my solitude to other people.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

The wisest have the most authority.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

I’ve always been fascinated by everything with wings.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.