Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

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.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

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

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

The worst men often give the best advice.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

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

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.