We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I don’t think that experience is a very useful or convincing attribute for a sensible foreign policy. Henry Kissinger had a lot of experience.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

The reward of suffering is experience.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

Sometimes I’m a bit under-aggressive and sometimes a bit over. But I think it’s good to have both.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.

It’s not possible to stop love.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

I always believe that there should come a time when your energy, speed, stamina should combine well with your brains.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.

The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

Nature does nothing in vain.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn’t do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

It’s probably the worst feeling in the world, when you’re deeply and madly in love with a woman and you know she’s not feeling you the same way, and you don’t know why.

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

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

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

When we trust God more than our feelings, it confuses the devil. I mean, when he throws you his best shot and he can’t budge you from believing God, he won’t know what to do with you anymore.

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.