Beauty and folly are old companions.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

When you’re 25 or 30, you know, you can’t wear lime-green eye shadow anymore.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

Water’s never clumsy.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Time discovers truth.

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

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

In our age there is no such thing as ‚keeping out of politics.‘ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

It’s always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you’re seeing the most beautiful thing on God’s Earth.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

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.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

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

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

Surely wisdom will come as we listen to learn from children, parents, partners, neighbors, Church leaders, and the Lord.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Africa is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.