It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

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

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

I’m a bookworm. I know with my physical appearance that I don’t look like the typical reader. I’m in Barnes & Noble all the time, and you can look at people that look like they are supposed to be in there. I am in there, pants sagging, hat backwards.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.

Being young is a great advantage, since we see the world from a new perspective and we are not afraid to make radical changes.

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

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

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

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

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

The American people are bigger than any president. I suppose I have faith in my country and in what it is founded on and the values we hold dear.

Girls are soft and pretty.

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

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

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

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

If you want someone to say, ‚She’s so sweet, and she’s so cute, and, honey, point your foot,‘ that’s not my school. You can go to the YMCA and have a nobody teach your kid if that’s what you want to hear.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.