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.

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.

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.

There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.

All the wealth in the world is nothing, pointless - of no true value - if you yourself feel worthless.

Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.

Mindful and creative, a child who has neither a past, nor examples to follow, nor value judgments, simply lives, speaks and plays in freedom.

I could discern clearly, even at that early age, the essential difference between people who are kind to dogs and people who really love them.

I became intimately acquainted with the Bible only as a theological student.

I'm starting to teach now: I teach in the graduate film program at NYU and next year I'm going to be teaching at Los Angeles at the film program and English program at UCLA.

We are co-creators with God, not puppets on a string waiting for something to happen.

Spiritual matters should be private.

When you have confidence, you can do anything.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.