Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Many people feel so pressured by the expectations of others that it causes them to be frustrated, miserable and confused about what they should do. But there is a way to live a simple, joy-filled, peaceful life, and the key is learning how to be led by the Holy Spirit, not the traditions or expectations of man.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

‚1984‘ is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under different names.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‚always do what you are afraid to do.‘

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

I’m tender on the inside.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

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

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

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

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.