Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

Because I was suspicious of the traditional Christian church, I tended to tar them all with the same brush. That was a mistake, because there are righteous people working in a whole rainbow of belief systems – from Hasidic Jews to right-wing Bible Belters to charismatic Catholics.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

I think the word rich is all relative.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

We are a nation of communities… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.

We are all alike, on the inside.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

Racial prejudice, anti-Semitism, or hatred of anyone with different beliefs has no place in the human mind or heart.

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.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

If you would judge, understand.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them… may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.