Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

Silence is the mother of truth.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

He that sows thorns should never go barefoot.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

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

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.

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

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

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.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

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

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

Remember that all financial markets are filled with good but not necessarily innocent people looking after their own self-interests before they look after yours.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.