They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

Seeing is not always believing.

I just think people should invest in the world. Don’t invest in fashion, but invest in the world.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

Sin is geographical.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

What one fool can understand, another can.

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

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Women are considered deep – why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

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

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

For all who love freedom and peace, the world without Saddam Hussein’s regime is a better and safer place.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

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

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Life is a song to me.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

I am in the world feeling my way to light ‚amid the encircling gloom.‘

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.