We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

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

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

We moralize among ruins.

Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

What we live by we die by.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

Our minds work in real time, which begins at the Big Bang and will end, if there is a Big Crunch – which seems unlikely, now, from the latest data showing accelerating expansion. Consciousness would come to an end at a singularity.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

I have wondered about time all my life.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

To the people I forgot, you weren’t on my mind for some reason and you probably don’t deserve any thanks anyway.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

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

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.