When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

There is moderation even in excess.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope.

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

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

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

You can’t take care of charity unless you take care of yourself first.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

The world has crafted a beautiful balance of collective action – common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

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

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

Nature abhors annihilation.

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

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

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

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

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

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.