My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

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

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Change alone is unchanging.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

By a lie, a man… annihilates his dignity as a man.

Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Water is life, and clean water means health.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

If you like it you should enjoy it! Moderation in everything. If there’s things you really love, you should enjoy. You get one life, so you should enjoy it.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

Life is our dictionary.

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

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

There is no wealth but life.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what life brings to me.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

I’ve been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.

Respect is one of life’s greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don’t have that?

I just have an enthusiasm for life.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Chance is an element of life. What I try to do is study what I call the mechanics of reality as carefully as I can.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

Life is better when people are working, happy, and spending money.

There are three constants in life… change, choice and principles.

I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

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