Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.

God created man, but I could do better.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

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

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

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.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

I’m constantly thinking.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

There is so much that people take for granted.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

I have wondered about time all my life.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

A president has an inescapable responsibility to provide direction: What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? Why? To do that, he has to both analyze and reflect.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.