All Quotes

"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats."

"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem."

"Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have."

"In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice."

"Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers."

"Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true."

"Perspective— Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that."

"Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place."

"The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities.""

"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

"The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work."

"The original sin is to limit the Is. —Don't."

"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change."

"There is no problem so big that it cannot be run away from."… "You're quoting Snoopy the dog, I believe?" "I'll quote the truth wherever I find it thank you."

"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts."

"We're all the sons of God, or children of the Is, or ideas of the Mind, or however else you want to say it."

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."

"You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them."

"You teach best what you most need to learn."

"You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy."

"Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years."

"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah."

"I felt like a moth in a chandelier — all at once there were lots of pretty choices, but I wasn't quite sure where to fly."

"No one does anything uncharacteristic of who they are."

"There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go."

"That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning."

"The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it."

"The music broke from the piano like clear cold water from a prophet-touched rock, pouring and splashing around us while her fingers leaped and spread, curled and stiffened and melted and flickered in magic pass and streaked lightning above the keyboard. Never before had she played for me... because we were lovers now, was she free to play...?"

"What I have just heard is pure . . . listen! . . . radiance, that you took from cloud-linings and sunrises and distilled into light that I can hear! Do you know how good, how lovely that is, what you can make the piano do?"

"He wanted so much to ask, and he dared so little to know."

"As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming, instead of being. Beyond time, we're all one."

"The things we own, the places we live, the events of our lives: empty settings. How easy to chase after settings, and forget diamonds! The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?"

"The opposite of loneliness, it's not togetherness. It is intimacy."

"We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!"

"Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to Love."

"It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid?"

"Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not."

"Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative."

"Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have left the vulgar stuff alone."

"It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them."

"It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation."

"I'm tired of Love; I'm still more tired of Rhyme. But money gives me pleasure all the time."

"How did the party go in Portman Square? I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there. And how did Lady Gaster's party go? Juliet was next me and I do not know."

"The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."

"I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."

"Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!"

"It was my shame, and now it is my boast, That I have loved you rather more than most."

"The world is full of double beds And most delightful maidenheads, Which being so, there’s no excuse For sodomy or self-abuse."

"[M]others of large families (who claim to common sense) Will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense."