Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

I know love is the answer.

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.

I am not the first Buddha who came upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time, another Buddha will arise in the world – a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, auspicious, knowing the universe, an incomparable leader of men, a master of angels and mortals.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

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. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

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

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

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

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

O, had I but followed the arts!

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

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

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.