In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there’s a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they’re not the same, ever again.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

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.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

I’ve never considered musical equipment very sacred.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

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.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

A woman of the world is anxious to exhibit her form and shape, whether walking, standing, sitting, or sleeping. Even when represented as a picture, she desires to captivate with the charms of her beauty and, thus, to rob men of their steadfast heart.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

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

Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

I’m just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family, and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

The time to worrying about flying is when you’re on the ground. When you’re up in the air, it’s too late. No point in worrying about it then.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

Nothing on this earth is standing still. It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.