When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

As I’m traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we’ve harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don’t know what I feel; I just don’t know what the emotion is.

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

Worry – a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

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’m not the same man I used to be, I’m not out hell-raising, stuff like that. I am a changed man.

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

I have 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and they keep me young.

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.

Youth is wasted on the young.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

I just don’t have time to get old!

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.