It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They’ve got their heads screwed on a lot better.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

We live in ugly times.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

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

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

There are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.