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

Being ‚contented‘ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.

Change alone is unchanging.

A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

At the end of the day, I want to be part of the same conversation as Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

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

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

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

Life is just one damned thing after another.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

To be renewed is everything. What more could one ask for than to have one’s youth back again?

Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

Life, if well lived, is long enough.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.