The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life. . . To seek a total unity is wrong. To give as much meaning to one’s life as possible is right to me.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other persons point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

One can acquire everything in solitude—except character.

An inability to stay quiet . . . is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

I have arrived. I am home in the here, in the now. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate I dwell.

If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad.

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.