It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don’t want victories anymore.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

It is true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn church, I would definitely choose the first one.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

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.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.

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.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

The Oklahoma City bombing was simple technology, horribly used. The problem is not technology. The problem is the person or persons using it.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

Death obsesses me, yes it does. I can’t really understand why it doesn’t obsess everyone – I think it does really, I’m just a little more out about it.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

As I’m traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we’ve harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don’t know what I feel; I just don’t know what the emotion is.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

I restore myself when I’m alone.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

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

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

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

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.