It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Conventionality is not morality.

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.

If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.

And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.

Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.

You are human and fallible.

When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.

I always wanted to get into rock music so I could cover up my real personality, change my voice, and create a false self to hide behind.

To me John Coltrane was like an angel on earth. He struck me that deeply.

A room to myself is a luxury that I do not always enjoy.

Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.

You ever try to go a day without judgment?

Complaining is an insult to God.

I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it.

Music is everything to me. Without music, I wouldnt be here in America now, and I would have been a completely different person. It made me who I am today.