Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

I wanted to only create a great perfume, not any perfume that would sell, but a great artistic one that the fans would not feel cheated by.

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed – chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.

I tell people, and it’s the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won’t make me a car. And you can sit in church till your bottom is flat and that won’t make you a servant of Christ.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

Many readers fail to realize this, but ‚The Color Purple‘ is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one’s original God: the earth and nature.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May; but at length the season of summer does come.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that’s it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called ‚The Truth‘.

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.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.

I just want to be myself.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

I want people to understand they have to live their own lives the way they want to and not just do what we do.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

I will never say something I don’t agree with or believe in… even if the reward is massive!

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.