It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.
It’s odd that the people who worry whether certain plays are “morally offensive” so rarely worry about the moral offensiveness of war, poverty, bigotry.
In a real sense, all of us are “the parents” of all young children – because we help shape the culture and determine its values.
Patriotism is wanting what is best for your country. Nationalism is thinking your country is best, no matter what it does.
But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.
Just as communism always begins with an appeal to “humanity” and equality” and ends with inhuman despotism, so does fascism always begin with an appeal to “nationalism” and “individualism,” and ends with a military collectivism far worse than the disease it purports to cure.
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Happiness is a direction, not a place.
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.
Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure.
Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.
The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world – it is the courage to be who you are.
When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
People who think they’re generous to a fault usually think that’s their only fault.