There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

I am the most helpful and open up doors for everyone and I like to share.

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.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

I believe when it comes to love, there’s something intangible about who we are attracted to, and I don’t think I have a pattern.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if its the way you say it, or how you look.

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

My faith helps me overcome such negative emotions and find my equilibrium.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

I don’t want people to think of me as sexy.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

I don’t think the Christian Right dominates America in the way some in the media believe they do.

Some men do think I’m a psycho bunny-boiler.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

I guess it’s flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

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.

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called ‚walking.‘

When I don’t feel free and can’t do what I want I just react. I go against it.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

We’re a blip in the existence of the universe, and we’re constantly trying to pull each other down. Not doing things to help each other.

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

Of course I get hurt.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

It’s true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?