Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

As apostles and prophets, we are concerned not only for our children and grandchildren but for yours as well – and for each of God’s children.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

I’m an only child.

Dialogue means debates and everyone’s point of view.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

I think, a lot of times when you meet someone, you feel like you need to appear like you’re not interested in them so that they’ll be more interested in you. But what happens when you start showing him that you actually like him? What’s he gonna do then? Play the tape forward; how do you keep a guy like that? I don’t want to sign up for that.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

I’ve always regretted that I never was able to talk openly with my parents, especially with my father. I’ve heard and read so many things about my family that I can no longer believe anything; every relative I question has a completely different story from the last.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Before I look stupid and not know what a word means or how to pronounce it, I’ll stop the whole production: ‚Hey, real quick, guys. Define this word for me. Somebody.‘

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

When I think of the love I feel for each member of our family, I sense, to a slight degree, the love that our Heavenly Father bears for His children.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

In the real world, children love me.

In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

The ‚Maddox Jolie-Pitt‘ Foundation’s work is inspired by our children and their connections to particular countries.

The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!

All men hate the nagging.

Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

No person is important enough to make me angry.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.

We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.