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

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn’t even know you’d done.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

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

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

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.

‚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.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

You know I vowed when I became President not to talk about the loneliest toughest job in the world and I didn’t.

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.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Wonder is the basis of worship.

Anti-Americanism is a pure totalitarian concept. The very notion is idiotic.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

I don’t have maids or servants, and my husband and I love waking up early and going to the 24-hour supermarket when there is nobody else there.

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.

I don’t like being alone.

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

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

I have wondered about time all my life.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

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

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

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

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

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

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.

Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.

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

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

I think that cancer is a life form that exists out there, and it exists in us. I think even the concept of healing is a spiritual principle that we have to really look at. I think the word itself is something we ought to get rid of, because it implies that there is illness – that there is something wrong.

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

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.