I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Hope is not a resting place but a starting point – a cactus, not a cushion.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

I totally disagree with the view that the Tibet struggle will die, and there will be no hope for Tibet, after the Dalai Lama passes away.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Marriage is the death of hope.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

It’s pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we’re going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.

Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

He who has felt his own ruin will not imagine the case of any to be hopeless; nor will he think them too fallen to be worthy his regard.

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

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

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

We do not judge the people we love.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

God doesn’t love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face. You know, I prayed about it a long, long, long, long, long time, because there again, I wouldn’t want to do anything that I felt was going to be offensive to God.

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

One day it will be over, and I don’t care.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.