In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

I’ve never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a ‚fat cat‘ and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a ‚public-spirited philanthropist‘.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.

I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I’m not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

The coward only threatens when he is safe.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

A creep is someone who claims he’s one thing but he’s actually another.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

I don’t like freeloaders; I don’t like people who are negative.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Action is character.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I don’t do any vulgar movements.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

When people meet me, they say that I’m really kind – contrary to a lot of my music.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

I don’t want people to think of me as sexy.