“You can read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you must share a joke with someone else.”

Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?

The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.

You can kill the body but not the spirit.

Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

Marriage is like life – it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Marriage: A friendship recognized by the police.

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward.

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures.

To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.

I’m a human being just like you are. And I hurt and love just like everybody else, and people tend to forget that.

Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

Much like a wobbly toddler or an unhinged politician, one immediately looks for someone else to blame. God. Your parents. Ex-girlfriends. Undocumented immigrants. Marvin in Human Resources. China.

I often say to my assistants, “Never trust anybody,” but what I mean is that you should never trust someone else to do a job exactly the way you would want it done.

While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else.

I feel the same way about all my friends. To me, the exact relationship between me and someone else doesn’t matter much. But people want to label everything… So I guess I seem indifferent in that way.

Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics.

If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?