Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Go on thinking that you don’t need to be read and you’ll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won’t feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof.

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

I think I have always had a little humor.

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

Observe all men, thyself most.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world – not even our troubles.

I’ve lived a very colorful life, and I’ve said some things, But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them – and I won’t.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

I owe my solitude to other people.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

Such as we are made of, such we be.