Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Life is anything but predictable.

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.

Time stays, we go.

Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.

Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

I don’t know how to have a normal relationship because I try to act normal and love from a normal place and live a normal life, but there is sort of an abnormal magnifying glass, like telescope lens, on everything that happens.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.

Character is expressed through our behavior patterns, or natural responses to things.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

My life is the road, man. I need to keep moving.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.

Every man’s reputation proceeds from those of his own household.

My life has been very full.

An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome.

A good name is rather to be chosen than riches.

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

Nothing on this earth is standing still. It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

I have no hostility to nature, but a child’s love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.