Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

The best part about being in your thirties is you know what works for you.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Your body has space within you that cannot die.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

Nobody knows me.

We can’t all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.

Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

I’m one of them guys that tries to make everything the best of the best, so sometimes I’m out of control with it.

I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy – but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that’s how I am guided.

There are certain things that bother me and certain things that don’t. Personal attacks on me? I think I’m just so used to it.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don’t just be mad at him or her.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.

No one but a fool is always right.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.