Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

There’s two sorts of fear: one you embrace and one you should listen to and turn the other way.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

I don’t need you to be funny. I don’t want to be entertained.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

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.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

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

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

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.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.

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

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

I will not be concerned at other men’s not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.

Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.

I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m dumb, I smell. Did I mention I’m stupid?

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

I’m not the same man I used to be, I’m not out hell-raising, stuff like that. I am a changed man.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don’t want victories anymore.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Seeing myself on the screen makes me cringe. I understand that I am that way – pouty.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

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

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

There’s a long way to fall when you pretend that you’re so far away from the earth, far away from reality, floating in a bubble that’s protected by fame or success. It’s scary, and it’s the thing I fear the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. It can be poison to you, fame.