Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

A fool is wise in his eyes.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Remember that a gesture of friendship, no matter how small, is always appreciated.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

The worst men often give the best advice.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

When I started out, I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

History is written by the victors.

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.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

If a star or studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened – as if somebody was trying to demote them.

I’ve always strived to be successful, not famous.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

Years ago, when I first started being a big star, I had fans that were fanatical. It was when ‚Jolene‘ was a big hit.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

I was an overnight sensation.

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

Friendship, like credit, is highest when it is not used.

Life is precious.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.