Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

Life is precious.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.

Time stays, we go.

To be social is to be forgiving.

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

Women. They are a complete mystery.

I always wanted to be loved.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

My measure of success is whether I’m fulfilling my mission.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

I searched for years I found no love. I’m sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

You’re unlikely to discover something new without a lot of practice on old stuff, but further, you should get a heck of a lot of fun out of working out funny relations and interesting things.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

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

I love stuff from the Holy Land. It makes me feel blessed.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

My family has never been there for me. They expect things because we’re blood.

The great thing about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become something remarkable.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.