Whether one showed you and execution or a little finger, you would extract an equally edifying thought from both of them, and would still be content. That's the way to get on in life.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

The most offensive is not their lying - one can always forgive lying - lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth - what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.

Their beauty had always seemed to him like the beauty of pressed flowers - lovely, but dead.

In other words, I was a moderately happy penguin who was occasionally attacked by sadness.

All foreign food is doomed to be consumed in India not so much by Indians as by a voracious Indian sensibility, which demands infinite versions of Indian food, and is unmoved by difference.

Get happiness out of your work or you may never know what happiness is.

I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?

The next big invention that will change the way we live should be things like ways of generating energy like electricity.

Action is just one of my skills.

If you're white, you're alright. If you're brown, stick around. but if you're black, oh baby. Get back, Get back, Get back.

Someday America will have its very own commercial-free TV and radio station devoted to only one thing: to teach people, in their homes, all the essentials of personal achievement.

Criticism is something that you have to take, regardless of what you do.