The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

Time stays, we go.

Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

The good times of today, are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

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.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you’re not alone.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It’s a gift.

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer’s you are an old fart. That’s how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

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

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

I don’t have many friends; I’m very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated, and I’ve never been really close to anyone.

I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.

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

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I haven’t written my own epitaph, and I’m not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple, and that it will point people not to me, but to the One I served.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.