When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.

"All the evil in the world comes from us bothering with each other

The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit ? tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God ? but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day the cat died. The saint's followers were panic-stricken. It was a major religious crisis ? how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.

"One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.'

It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.

Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

You can take Elvis. You can take Marilyn Monroe. Success and fame will not be the answer if something inside of you is bothering you if things in your mind aren't going right.

When I get old I'm going to the old folks' home. I don't want to be one of those guys who's hanging around the house bothering the kids. But not just any old folks' home. I want the whole top floor.

People got insights into what was bothering them but they hardly did a damn thing to change.