Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

We can’t just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

The ‚soul‘ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

Vanity is but the surface.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

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

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

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

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

I was raised to be independent.

How does a nice Catholic girl end up going to prison for a year? It’s crazy. I’ve made mistakes. I have to pay for those mistakes.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

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

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don’t just be mad at him or her.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

I think for my bones and my size, I better stay with my 60 kilo.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

This is love: the flowering of love is meditation.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

Why go through life if you’re not going to challenge yourself?

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.

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

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Relish everything that’s inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

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

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.