One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

It’s a very good historical book about history.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

My experience is listen, see, feel – and then think about what you change.

I was adored once too.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I’ve been called a great adventurer.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

I don’t really focus on these things – on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field – stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

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.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

There is no education like adversity.

Although the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.