Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

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

My wife is already in Heaven.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

Every time I plant a seed, He say kill it before it grow, he say kill it before they grow.

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.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

I still close my eyes and go home – I can always draw from that.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

In every parting there is an image of death.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about – or as a ritual like filling up a car – but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

I have good days and bad days.

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.