The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

Theology is unnecessary.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

We live in a bewildering world.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

We have the duty to protect the life of an unborn child.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

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

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Nature abhors annihilation.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.