I’ve never considered musical equipment very sacred.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

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.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

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

I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

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

What one fool can understand, another can.

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

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

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

Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

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.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

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.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

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.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.