The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.

The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

There's only one way to make a beginning, and that is to begin; and begin with hard work, and patience, prepared for all the disappoint­ment s.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

Whether people see you as a shadow or as an invisible or stupid sort of thing, a time will come when that Image of yours will never be seen by commoners.

This was my love, her love --torn, damaged, broken, ripped apart and put back together. This was our tattered love.

To sing the ballad with a knowingness about what you are talking about. If it's somebody else's lyric, and the message is a little unusual for you, it requires that you learn that new message.

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

The first step is what I like to be sure of ... to the second step it often binds you.

Music, the knife without a hilt.

You can depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself.

The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence.

I take one decisive and immediate step, and resign my all to the sufficiency of my Saviour.

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase is fruits of innocence and blessedness.