“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”

I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you’re working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn’t dream of interrupting on the golf course.

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.

But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.

You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.

Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.

Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.

The beginning of knowledge is the intention, then listening, then understanding, then action, then preservation, and then spreading it.

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.

Not only a truer knowledge, but a greater power comes to one in the quietude and silence of a mind that, instead of bubbling on the surface, can go to its own depths and listen.

I will still live like a ghost in the mornings; walking, listening, pouring coffee to finish sometime by the afternoon, when I’ve had enough of watching the world and do all I can to live in it.

Listen to me, and listen very carefully. The fact that you failed doesn’t mean it’s the end. It only means you’re on the right track to accomplish your goals.

Nothing is harder to see into thanpeoples nature. The sage looks at subtle phenomena and listens tosmall voices. This harmonizes the outside with the inside and the inside with the outside.

In dealing with those who share his bed, the enlightened ruler may enjoy their beauty but should not listen to their special pleas.

When I talk about having good hearing, I don’t mean just listening, but listening to yourself. When I talk about good eyesight, I don’t mean just looking, but looking at yourself.