“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.”

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.

As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.

For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.

Don’t wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

Life isn’t long enough for love and art.

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.

You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?

Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.

When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it.

You know, T can stand for anything. T stand for working hard. T stand for loving thy neighbor. T stand for feeding the hungry. T stand for just working, working, working, being happy on the set, you know, lifting everybody’s spirits. T stands for just a nice guy.

Music is a universal language insofar as you don’t need to know anything else about a musician that you are playing with other than that they can play music.

Playing in a group, I’m tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That’s just me getting older. I’m not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice – no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.

In folk music, I’ve always been fond of the fragment. The song that has one verse. And you don’t know anything about the characters, you don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re doing something important. I love that. I’m really a sucker for that kind of song.

It’s much too late to do anything about rock & roll now.

If you assume you haven’t learned anything yet, there’s no reason your playing can’t stay dynamic all your life.

I did not take this dress or do anything but by the command of Our Lord and of the Angels.