It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn’t that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

Character is expressed through our behavior patterns, or natural responses to things.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

If I’d just tried for them dinky singles I could’ve batted around .600.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

The skin of my character in ‚The Man Who Fell to Earth‘ was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

I love Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove – there is so much life and vitality around Portobello and Ladbroke Grove. It has come up a lot since I started Virgin more than 40 years ago, but there is so much character.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.

Every time I plant a seed, He say kill it before it grow, he say kill it before they grow.

The starting point of all achievement is desire.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

I still close my eyes and go home – I can always draw from that.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action – faithful action, for the world, and in God.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

My one big regret is that I didn’t play on for ten more years.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

I think that once you’ve had a few No. 1s in your career that you’ve kind of proven yourself, and I don’t feel the need to prove anything anymore.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ‚em out, I pick the round.

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.