The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.
I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers.
Seeing my face on a poster is surreal. You look at it and it's not quite like you, if you know what I mean... it's almost a third person kind of thing. I still find it strange.
One thing I love to do is produce. I've produced a couple of bands. I mean, nothing ever really happened with 'em, but I enjoy getting a young band into the studio and guiding them, and making them feel at ease.
It is by no means necessary that a great nation should always stand at the heroic level. But no nation has the root of greatness in it unless in time of need it can rise to the heroic mood.
God does work through both pure and impure vessels but that does not mean that one should keep nature impure for ever. When the vessel will become pure the urge for action coming from within will be a flawless, definitive action. As long as that does not happen one has to minimize one's activities.
I think it's pretty classic if you look at the way entertainment reflects the country's status. There was a reason in the '50s when communism was bubbling that there were a million zombie movies. Because that is the direct allocation. So for the last two years we've been hearing, "Make America great again." People go, "Well, America was never great." What do you mean? What you mean is that they want to look back in history. And so I think it's only natural for entertainment to reflect that.
The world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves can not drown him. He snaps his fingers at laws; and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. Through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams.
For, of course, being a girl, one’s whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble freedom. What else did a girl’s life mean?