Life is wasted on the living.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Life isn’t fair, but God is.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

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.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

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 are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

There is so much that people take for granted.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

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.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

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

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

No man was ever wise by chance.

My life has been very full.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

Where there is love there is life.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.