Eubie Blake

Listen to the birds and don’t hate nobody.

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind.

I don’t have any bad habbits. They might be bad habits for other people, but they’re all right for me.

If I’d known I’d live to be a 100 I’d have taken much better care of myself.

Life is a helluva lot more fun if you say yes rather than no.

I can only say that I have had a wonderful life.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

There it is: it doesn’t make any difference who we are or what we are, there’s always somebody to look down on! somebody to hold in light esteem, somebody to be indifferent about.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.

Man is a comparative being. Substandard things must go before super-standard things can come.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak of yourself.

The way out of life and death is not some special technique; essential thing is to penetrate to the root of life and death.

I’ve always thought that each person invented himself… for whatever reason, through whatever circumstance, through whatever he is gone through… that we are each a figment of our own imagination… And some people have a greater ability to imagine than others.

There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.

When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them.

Life is like improvised jazz. We cannot regulate all the variables. We must play it with panache and flair as best we can.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

When you have the right script for your life, you will always be the star of the show.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.