The only part of Christian teachings which will be truly accepted by the Chinese people is Christ's injunction to be "harmless as doves" but "wise as serpents.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.

Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.

When Small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

Neckties strangle clear thinking.

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence.

I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.

My beard grows down to my toes, I never wears no clothes, I wraps my hairAround my bare, And down the road I goes.

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

The world is going to become bloody stupid and from now on will be a very boring place. We’re lucky to be living now.

Living in Hell kept him aware of the possibility of Heaven, and he’d never felt more alive.

And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?

Mexico. Melancholy, profoundly right and wrong, it embraces as it strangulates.

When the economy is still struggling, putting people back to work, finding ways to spur economic activity, ultimately can help to reduce the structural deficits and debts that countries experience.

I don't see that a single line can constitute a stanza, although it can constitute a whole poem.

The most conventional statements are both true and welcome.

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.