Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

America is just downright mean.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.

Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.

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

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

I wouldn’t say that anyone in fashion is on my side. I don’t think there’s anyone on my side.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

No man wants to settle down. It happens. Eventually you’re going to bump into somebody that makes you go, ‚Hmm, I don’t mind seeing this person every day.‘

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Basically my wife was immature. I’d be at home in the bath and she’d come in and sink my boats.

We live in a bewildering world.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

I never promise anything. I don’t promise anything to my mum. I don’t promise anything to the supporters.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

There is a ‚sanctity‘ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

If I think too hard about a relationship, I’ll talk myself out of it.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need – not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

I just got to feel that whoever I marry has some real regard for me.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

I have such incredible experiences in my life.

A woman can bring a new love to each man she loves, providing there are not too many.