I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

If you are not using your mind for self-torture, why would you think of peace?

I think to myself and at the same time, I know these thoughts can’t be the ones I really want to think. That there must be something better to have on my mind than what fills it and refuses to stop occupying all the room.

But I want first of all — in fact, as an end to these other desires — to be at peace with myself

Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart someone with whom I could spend a little time without being afraid that i would lose him the next day. With that reassurance, the time would pass more slowly. We could be silent for a while because we'd know we had the rest of our lives together for conversation. I wouldn't have to worry about serious matters, about difficult decisions and hard words.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I’d sooner think for myself than get my entertainment premasticated.

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.

You want it your own way. You’d just like to have a little peace; you’d like to have a little happiness, you know, just “gimme a break!” But the more you think that way, the more you try to get life to come out so that it will always suit you, the more your fear of other people and what’s outside your room grows.

I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it's being ruined is hard.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

I prefer the troubled ocean of war...to the tranquil, putrescent pool of ignominious peace.

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

"Peace can exist only in the present moment. It is rid iculous to say "Wait until I finish this, then I will be free to live in peace." What is "this"? A di­ploma, a job, a house, the payment of a debt? If yo u th ink that way, peace will never come. There is always another "this" that will follow the present one. If you are not living in peace at this moment, you will never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only "the hope of peace some day.

I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.