William Hazlitt Quotes

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

I have a philosophy, folks, and it's based on my own life. I'm using my own life experiences to philosophize about things in general. It has to do with desire.

I conceived 'All Is Song' as a modernised, loosely interpreted version of Socrates's life.

I could have been a rich kid who stayed in college and got by on the path of least resistance, but I got much more out of being in the world and pulling my own weight.

As we grow older I always think, why didn't I do more when I was young, why didn't I risk more?

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Art has to address eternal issues.

I've had two children. I've had three boyfriends. I've had a lot of things happen that can change your opinions and values and philosophies.

We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence,' we think of Einstein instead of humans.

I am not fundamentally a musician, I am fundamentally a human being.

I had more energy at 50. On the other hand, at 75, I've probably got a little more wisdom and good judgment than I had at 50 because I've got more experience. But I haven't really changed. I'm still driven by the same philosophy.

I was lucky, and once I moved to L.A., I didn't have to get another job besides acting. But I wouldn't trade my previous jobs for anything.

Living gives you a better understanding of life. I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities. Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them.

I think anything that increases your understanding of the human condition... I think age and life, if you're lucky, makes you think deeper, and the other thing it makes you realize is that you never stop learning, and you never lose your fear of getting it wrong.

People are more than two-dimensional, and again I think the complexities in life, and in one's makeup, grow as you get older, partly through experience.

I love how complicated we are. We are complicated because of what we've had and lived.

Selfness is an essential fact of life. The thought of nonselfness, precise sameness is terrifying.

I've lived almost, like, four completely different lives. (Stripping) was just one section - one little small section, if that - but it was a very interesting and turbulent but kind of wild ride and I'm not ashamed of it all. I think it's hilarious and I learned a lot about human nature.

The most human thing about anyone is a thing he learns and ... and earns. It's a thing he can't have when he's very young; if he gets it at all, he gets it after a long search and a deep conviction. After that it's truly part of him as long as he lives.

We could have saved sixpence. We could have saved fivepence. But at what cost?

I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish." - Lara, from Doctor Zhivago

If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.