The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Seeing is not always believing.

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

I don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense of control.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.

It has been discovered that all the world is made of the same atoms, that the stars are of the same stuff as ourselves. It then becomes a question of where our stuff came from. Not just where did life come from, or where did the earth come from, but where did the stuff of life and of the earth come from?

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

Reality is a sliding door.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.