A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.

I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don’t think it’s intelligent, and it’s not sane. So why would you want to support it?

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

When I was married, I definitely went through a lying period.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

Did you know there’s a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy – running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything – is the same as wasting your time? It’s frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

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

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

The question is not, ‚Do you have a problem?‘ The question is, ‚Does the problem have you?‘

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some ‚Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.‘

I definitely connected to the fact that life gets out of control and you end up doing things and wishing you were doing other things instead.

What you are comes to you.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, ‚Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.‘

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.

Some scientists believe climate change is the cause of unprecedented melting of the North Pole, and that effects these very uncertain weather patterns. I think we should listen to those scientists and experts.

The people in my songs are all me.

A wet spot on the floor kind of put a scare in myself, so you never know inside those lines what might happen.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

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

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.