The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation it is understanding.

The things that one most wants to do are the things that are probably most worth doing.

The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation; it is understanding.

Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?

This alone is to be feared - the closed mind, the sleeping imagination, the death of the spirit. The death of the body is to that, I think, a little thing.

Nature is not silent, and never was a name more derisively inappropriate than when we speak of these non-human creatures who hoot and crow and bray as the dumb animals.

A sense of humor is so handy, isn't it? It lets you see both sides of a question so that you never need do anything.

I am much perturbed by this business of sickness. Our bodies seem so easily to leap into the saddle where our minds should be. People who are ill become changelings.

We each live in a private, distorted, individual world - stars turning in space, warmed for a moment by each other's light, then lost in infinite distance.

it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.

I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing.

Meaningful prayer is a matter of the heart, not the eloquence of the words.

Test everything that can be tested. As soon as you think you know something, that's when you stop questioning it. Understanding kills curiosity. Understanding kills progress.

The calm serenity of the breeze as it blows across the ocean releases the tangled web within my mind.

To laugh continually is to never laugh at all. For it takes the periodic sound of sorrow from which to distinguish the sound of joy.

God's silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses we are in a very elementary condition of grace.

And humility in politics means accepting that one party doesn't have all the answers recognising that working in partnership is progress not treachery.

Unless you are in the willingness and ease and ecstasy of some kind of moment, you may end up the editor of your thoughts and of your expressions. I find I'm that way on stage.

I think people who suffer from depression, unless it's post-traumatic, are probably going to struggle with it for their whole life.

I wondered if i would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself.

Never lose the childlike wonder. Show gratitude... Don't complain; just work harder... Never give up.