A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

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.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

I was mischievous. I wasn’t bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn’t know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

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

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

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

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

The future is purchased by the present.

When I was 8 years old, it mattered what my favorite singer said and wore and expressed opinions about.

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Delay is preferable to error.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

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

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

From the time I was a kid, I always knew something was going to happen to me. Didn’t know exactly what.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

One of the best mental disciplines for people to implement is simply putting together a schedule or a task list and actually executing it. Write the list or the schedule the night before, and then do what you said you would do. Life becomes much better when you do that.

You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.