I believe we live in a love-starved society. Everywhere you go there are probably people who haven’t had the right kind of love in their lives.

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

I’m a people’s man – only the people matter.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

I’m perpetually lonely.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

I don’t have many sad days.

When I was a child, there’s one thing I said: ‚I never want to be alone.‘ That’s what I would say. I don’t want to be alone.

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.

Babylon is everywhere. You have wrong and you have right. Wrong is what we call Babylon, wrong things. That is what Babylon is to me. I could have born in England, I could have born in America, it make no difference where me born, because there is Babylon everywhere.

It’s so much easier to like people, and to let people in, to trust them until they prove that you should do otherwise. The alternative is being an iceberg.

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

When your soul is resting, your emotions are okay, your mind is okay, and your will is at peace with God, not resisting what He’s doing.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.

Do I worry about being in the public eye and raising kids? Yeah. Any situation you’re in, you’re gonna worry about raising kids. But it’s champagne problems, too. There are people who can’t feed their kids.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

If someone decides they’re not going to be happy, it’s not your problem. You don’t have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

You cannot control your own population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

If you don’t feel safe as a child, you can’t learn.

Many churches today have special programs for people who are grieving, and these can be very helpful.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

Physical contact is a human necessity.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

If it’s stress of things that we cannot control, what you have to do is you mitigate that stress as much as possible. You’ve planned, you’ve trained, you’ve done everything you can in your power to mitigate the stress that’s facing you. And then after that, there’s nothing you can do. So, you have to let that one go.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

I suffer from deep depression, so my only release is music.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

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.

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.

I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinner table and talk to them about their mother who has cancer or their child who is struggling in school, and their fears about watching their lives go by, I think we’re all the same.

We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

I’m so happy I discovered early how wonderful music makes me feel.