Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Thirty thousand a year was all right, but dyspepsia and inability to be humanly happy robbed such princely income of all its value.

I've never experienced chronic poverty, but I know what it's like to live on £3 a week.

Duty--the command of heaven, the eldest voice of God.

I just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people's albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson.

I stepped from Plank to Plank A slow and cautious way

To claim that music is more important than oxygen would be trite and sentimental. It would also be true.

However softly we speak, God is near enough to hear us.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.