Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

I’ve realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts – Thats when I get in trouble.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

Senator McCain is Israel’s most unconditional ally in Mossad’s machinations, something that even his worst adversaries would have been able to imagine. McCain participated alongside this secret service in the creation of the Islamic State, which has appropriated a considerable part of Iraq as well as a third of Syria, according to its affirmations.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

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.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, ‚I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,‘ and I actually meant it.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

We moralize among ruins.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

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.

Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

I haven’t written my own epitaph, and I’m not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple, and that it will point people not to me, but to the One I served.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

I’m living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.