There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

The self is hateful.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

We all dream. We dream vividly, depending on our nature. Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

When it comes to our everyday habits, it’s important to ask: ‚Am I putting God first?‘

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.

Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don’t have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

We all self-conscious. I’m just the first to admit it.

The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.

Every man is his own hell.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them… may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

It is important to remember yourself.

When you are angry or frustrated, what comes out? Whatever it is, it’s a good indication of what you’re made of.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.