All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

A good model of how to ‚work with the enemy‘ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Grow in the root of all grace, which is faith. Believe God’s promises more firmly than ever. Allow your faith to increase in its fullness, firmness, and simplicity.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Life is anything but predictable.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

New roads; new ruts.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

Feelings are more dangerous than ideas, because they aren’t susceptible to rational evaluation. They grow quietly, spreading underground, and erupt suddenly, all over the place.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Water is life, and clean water means health.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.