Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Jesus is a divine guest inside of you all the time – one who loves, understands, sees and hears you. He wants to live in oneness with you… to be the centerpiece of everything you do.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

Nine men in ten are would be suicides.

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn’t have connectives like ‚and‘ that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

I would say that jazz is my own language.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they’re much more open.

A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

Rhyme patterns are nothing without meanings to the words. A lot of rappers can do those flows, but the raps aren’t really about anything – which is cool sometimes, but to have the flow and the message is one of my favorite things.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

It’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.

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.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

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

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.

I am not one who – who flamboyantly believes in throwing a lot of words around.

In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

I grew up cursing a lot.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

When all is said and done, what constitutes the impregnable superiority of Christianity over all other types of Faith is that it is ever more consciously identified with a Christogenesis: in other words, with an awareness of the rise of a certain universal Presence which is at once immortalizing and unifying.

I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of making the vow. She had no objection.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

I don’t like to talk much with people who always agree with me. It is amusing to coquette with an echo for a little while, but one soon tires of it.

The way I talk is bizarre.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.