An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false… In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

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

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God’s final word on where your lips end.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.

I don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

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.

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

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

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.

Vanity can apply to both insecurity and egotism. So I distance myself, because I feel everything.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

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

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

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

I’m constantly trying to find new ways to get my hair out of my face.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

‚Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

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.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

We live in ugly times.