Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

I love the attention but I don’t like too much of it.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

I’m happiest with my family around me.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

The less you know, the more you believe.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

I put cocoa butter all over my face and my iconic belly and my arms and legs. Why live rough? Live smooth.

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false… In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

I fall in love every day. Not with people but with situations.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

A conqueror is always a lover of peace.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action, which produces further confusion, further misery.

It has been hard for me to find it, but I have found love.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church. Because then I wouldn’t have to translate.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

Absolutely not. I have no problem with commitment. In fact, I love having someone in my life.

We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

I’ve told Billy if I ever caught him cheating, I wouldn’t kill him because I love his children and they need a dad. But I would beat him up. I know where all of his sports injuries are.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.

As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the TTPs?

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.