Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

What’s done can’t be undone.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

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.

Life is a dead-end street.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

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

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

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

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

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.

George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge… you can’t hear him talk.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Traveling around the world and preaching for over 70 years did not give much time for reflection.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.

What we live by we die by.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

Littera scripta manet – ‚The written word will remain‘. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me.

The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

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

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

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

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

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

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

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

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.

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

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

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.