The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

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

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

Life’s short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Money can’t buy life.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

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

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

How young can you die of old age?

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

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.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.