What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

I’ve found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.

The time to worrying about flying is when you’re on the ground. When you’re up in the air, it’s too late. No point in worrying about it then.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

It’s true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They’ve got their heads screwed on a lot better.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.