On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

I’m not an analyzer. I’ve got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don’t analyze people.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

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.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

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

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

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

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

I don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

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

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

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

Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

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