The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

Being ‚contented‘ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

At the heart of every being lies creation’s dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

I got a lot of support from my parents. That’s the one thing I always appreciated. They didn’t tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

It’s always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you’re seeing the most beautiful thing on God’s Earth.

To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

Instead of being critical of people in authority over you and envious of their position, be happy you’re not responsible for everything they have to do. Instead of piling on complaints, thank them for what they do. Overwhelm them with encouragement and appreciation!

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

It was such a leap in my career when ‚Truman Show‘ came along. It’s always been a long process for me insofar as recognition goes, but that’s OK because you appreciate it when it comes.

Tell your wife often how terrific she looks.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

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

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

It’s human nature to blame someone else for your shortcomings or upsets.

I know a lot of people who wouldn’t be comfortable with everything that comes with being in a band as big as Nirvana. The thing that I don’t understand is not appreciating that simple gift of being able to play music.

The craving for information is so huge now, and it can be marketed at such a rapid rate.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

To be is to do.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Have you not noticed that love is silence? It may be while holding the hand of another, or looking lovingly at a child, or taking in the beauty of an evening. Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

You can’t trust very many people.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

I want to thank my Eritrean fans for feeling connected to me and for supporting me. I feel extremely grateful.

If I’m a star, then the people made me a star.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

It is wonderful to have someone praise you, to be desired.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.