Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

I think if we didn’t contradict ourselves, it would be awfully boring. It would be tedious to be alive.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can’t have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I’d rather not be in a cage. I’d rather be dead. And it’s real simple. And I think it’s not that uncommon.

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.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Ability without honor is useless.

The man of life upright has a guiltless heart, free from all dishonest deeds or thought of vanity.

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

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

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Honesty is the best policy.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced – the just demands of peace and security will be met – or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Reproach is shame, blame, disgrace, disapproval and a disrespectful attitude toward yourself. When you’re under reproach, your behavior shows it.

I have learned that I really do have discipline, self-control, and patience. But they were given to me as a seed, and it’s up to me to choose to develop them.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

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.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

The universe is transformation: life is opinion.