I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

I’m drawn to bad romances.

Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

Enjoyment is an incredible energizer to the human spirit.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.

However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

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.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

I have this really high priority on happiness and finding something to be happy about.

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

I think that, whatever happens, I’m just happy I’ve written those songs and I’ve made an album. That’s really big for me, and I’m proud of that.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

I was always interested in choreography – in making people think and feel something.

Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

Life well spent is long.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

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

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

Even when a person has all of life’s comforts – good food, good shelter, a companion – he or she can still become unhappy when encountering a tragic situation.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

There’s a part of you – the born-again part, your spirit – that’s dead to sin. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin. The ‚wilderness‘ part of you – your soul – is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

Where thou art, that is home.