Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

I was never focused on me, me, me all the time. I was always focused on somebody else.

Lot of players lose hope because of lack of motivation.

Optimist: day dreamer more elegantly spelled.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Whatever role I play is a positive role; it’s a strong role. Never negative.

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

Animals are my friends… and I don’t eat my friends.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

We are what we believe we are.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

My father always taught me that when you help other people, then God will give you double. And that’s what has really happened to me. When I have helped other people who are in need, God has helped me more.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

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

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people.

Great teachers emanate out of knowledge, passion and compassion.

Miracles come in moments. Be ready and willing.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level… Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

I’ve learned never to say never.

I think it is a sin to look at another person as inferior to yourself because of race or because of ethnic background, and I think the greatest thing to do is to pray that God will give you love for them, and I do.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

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

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.