As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

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

Life is our dictionary.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

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

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Let us all remember this: one cannot proclaim the Gospel of Jesus without the tangible witness of one’s life.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

Winning – that’s the most important to me. It’s as simple as that.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

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

Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

A lot of people don’t like the road, but it’s as natural to me as breathing.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

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

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn’t us. Don’t be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

Good planning is important. I’ve also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you’re depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

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

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

Our life is made by the death of others.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.