It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

There is no such thing as a lovers‘ oath.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

Do not rebuke mockers, or they will hate you; rebuke the wise, and they will love you.

Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

Man is a universe within himself.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

Marriage is the most natural state of man, and… the state in which you will find solid happiness.

No, we don’t own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

Trying to meet new women, it’s always a little more difficult as opposed to calling somebody I knew that’s single and trying to rebuild that connection.

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

I always keep my guard up with guys and I guess that can get in the way sometimes. I can make them go through hell.

Ever since I first came here in 1963 to fight Henry Cooper, I have loved the people of England.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.

My friends, there are no friends.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

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

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

It’s so much easier to like people, and to let people in, to trust them until they prove that you should do otherwise. The alternative is being an iceberg.

How much better it would be if all could be more aware of God’s providence and love and express that gratitude to Him.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

Don’t ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can’t have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

I’ll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it’s disappointing.

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.