It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception.

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.

I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.

In life, you will always be faced with a series of God-ordained opportunities brilliantly disguised as problems and challenges.

You have two eyes, and two ears, but only one mouth. This is so because you are supposed to look and listen more than you talk.

Look: each moment is a cradle and a casket: may all life and all death seem strange to you.

For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.

When I'm on stage, I feel like a performer, for sure. I know people are looking at me and taking pictures and singing along, and that part's wonderful.

An ambition to excel in petty things obstructs the progress to nobler aims.

I think the main thing for kids is to have them believe in themselves.

While fools shun one set of faults they run into the opposite one.

Under the storms, sun becomes a god!

There's a great quote from Henry Kissinger, which I became aware of from reading [Joseph] Heller's Good As Gold. He said: 'Every great achievement was a dream before it became a reality.'