The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.

It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working at ten dollars per month) have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

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.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem. I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Life is a journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

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.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

I have such incredible experiences in my life.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life.

Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.

Ability without honor is useless.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

My life has been very full.

Life is grim, and we don’t have to be grim all the time.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

Our life is made by the death of others.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

I’ve been afraid of people playing their life away with too many toys.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation – or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays – is like a blind man’s dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person.

All art is quite useless.

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

Without discipline, there’s no life at all.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what life brings to me.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.