What a sad business, being funny 

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning!

Whomever lives, gambles with life.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

Life and death are too resolute, too implacable to be accidental.

“You’ll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.”

“What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.”

“Life can be wonderful if you’re not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination … and a little dough.”

“To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune.

Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.” 

“Life is a play that does not allow testing. So, sing, cry, dance, laugh and live intensely, before the curtain closes and the piece ends with no Applause.”

Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.

“I don’t believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

“My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain.

“Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‘elephant’.” – 

I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.” 

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

“We think too much and feel too little.”

“The mirror is my best friend because when I cry it never laughs.”

I am for people. I can’t help it.”

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.”

Imagination means nothing without doing.

You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.

Let us strive for the impossible. The great achievements throughout history have been the conquest of what seemed the impossible.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

I am a citizen of the world.

We think too much and feel too little.

I hope we shall abolish war and settle all differences at the conference table.

If you're really truthful with yourself, it's a wonderful guidance.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

I suppose that’s one of the ironies of life – doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

All artists experience a lull in their work. It is a period of replenishing the soil – of plowing in and turning under our past experiences and watering them afresh with new ones.

Simplicity is a difficult thing to achieve.

Simplicity of approach is always best.

One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.

In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. 

Machinery should be a blessing to mankind and not a curse.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with man.

The world is not composed of heroes and villains, but of men and women with all the passions that God has given them. The ignorant condemn, but the wise pity.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.

Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watch-tower on the look-out for incidents that may excite the imagination – music, a sunset, may give image to an idea.

The persecution of any minority is inhuman and unnatural. That belief is timeless and beyond change.

How does one get ideas? By sheer perseverance to the point of madness.

Beauty is the spirit of all things, an exaltation, a psalm of life and death, of good and evil, of vileness and purity, of joy and pain, of hate and love—all of it incarnate in the object we see or hear. It is an empathy, a feeling into art or nature that we observe—all of it a singing harmony to our senses.

Making fun is serious business.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Too much kindness and respect are given to the unseen and not enough to humanity. It seems that in our nature we loathe each other and bestow our respect and love on the abstract.

That which is apparent ends. That which is subtle is never-ending.