Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

To reach a port, we must sail – sail, not tie at anchor – sail, not drift.

I’m here to spread a message of hope. Follow your heart. Don’t follow what you’ve been told you’re supposed to do.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, ‚All right, well, I’d like to headline a tour,‘ and then when I get there, we’ll see what my next goal is.

Hey, I think it’s easy for guys to hit .300 and stay in the big leagues. Hit .200 and try to stick around as long as I did; I think it’s a much greater accomplishment. That’s hard.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

What one fool can understand, another can.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‚Why god? Why me?‘ and the thundering voice of God answered, ‚There’s just something about you that pisses me off.‘

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

The battle is all over except the ‚shouting‘ when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.

Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

I’d be so bored if I wasn’t going out there, knowing that I could still do it. So, I’m going to work hard to be ready to go, and I still plan on playing for a long time.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ‚Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full.‘

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few stones upon it.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

It is easy to dismiss the world as ‚irrelevant,‘ or consumed by ‚paranoid anti-Americanism,‘ but perhaps not wise.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.