A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Never speak to an invalid from behind, nor from the door, nor from any distance from him, nor when he is doing anything. The official politeness of servants in these things is so grateful to invalids, that many prefer, without knowing why, having none but servants about them.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

It’s not a slam at you when people are rude, it’s a slam at the people they’ve met before.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

The American people have not become heartless.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

‚Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Players today moan about the number of games, but when you’re young, you can’t play enough.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death… I think… peace and tranquillity will return again.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

I’ve looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.