There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

The spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything.

I think women love very hard. We love men. We just love with everything we have. And sometimes, I don’t know that that love is met with the type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Young love is wild and outrageous, laughing at moderation and blinding us to common sense.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

The African is my brother but he is my younger brother by several centuries.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

I feel you’re in charge of your own situation.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

I have made a few mistakes early on that I admit myself, and there have been times when I have gone over the top and done things that you shouldn’t do in international cricket, but that’s how you learn.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

All good leaders are connectors. They relate well and make people feel confident about themselves and their leader.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

The self is hateful.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

A man will speedily sit down and sympathize with a friend’s griefs, but if he sees him honored and esteemed, he is apt to regard him as a rival and does not so readily rejoice with him. This ought not to be; without effort, we ought to be happy in our brother’s happiness.

I believe in love at first sight. You want that connection, and then you want some problems.

My friends, there are no friends.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

Most of us experience a life full of wonderful moments and difficult moments. But for many of us, even when we are most joyful, there is fear behind our joy.

Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

People should make up their own mind about what they think of me.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

Be as you wish to seem.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

Strong emotions such as passion and bliss are indications that you’re connected to Spirit, or ‚inspired,‘ if you will. When you’re inspired, you activate dormant forces, and the abundance you seek in any form comes streaming into your life.

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

A friend is nothing but a known enemy.

I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.