To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

Teach a child to love his world deeply so that he may find the beauty and joy of life.

It is in the half fools and the half wise that the greatest danger lies.

As the sergeant said to the recruit: "You might as well be happy mate - no one cares if you ain't."

Old-fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled.

As a kid I had dreams about being successful, thinking it would be cool. Then, when I was in my 20s, I really thought I had it much more figured out than I do now.

No problem is so big and difficult that it can't be blamed on somebody else.

The way we gain wisdom in meditation is not by explanation. If you go into the planes of light, you will come out of the meditation knowing things ... things that are inexpressible.

Our music's kind of about taking something ugly and making it beautiful.

Music remains the most strange of the materials because we don't understand what happens when music moves you.

Boasting is always an advertisement of poverty.