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

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

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

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

Life is warfare.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

A jug fills drop by drop.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

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

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

Most people have no idea what something would sound like if it wasn’t an MP3.

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

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

There’s two sorts of fear: one you embrace and one you should listen to and turn the other way.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

There are certain things that bother me and certain things that don’t. Personal attacks on me? I think I’m just so used to it.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.