B. J. Porter Quotes

The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.

The mob is a sort of bear; while your ring is through its nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip, and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.

Guilt is a spiritual Rubicon.

If cowardice were not so completely a coward as to be unable to look steadily upon the effects of courage, he would find that there is no refuge so sure as dauntless valor.

The doubts of love are never to be wholly overcome; they grow with its various anxieties, timidities, and tenderness, and are the very fruits of the reverence in which the admired object is beheld.

The pure in heart are slow to credit calumnies, because they hardly comprehend what motives can be inducements to the alleged crimes.

True virtue, when she errs, needs not the eyes of men to excite her blushes; she is confounded at her own presence, and covered with confusion of face.

How different is the ready hand, tearful eye, and soothing voice, from the ostentatious appearance which is called pity.

In the career of female fame, there are few prizes to tie obtained which can vie with the obscure state of a beloved wife or a happy mother.

Interestingly, the American Embassy mentioned that our efficient relief effort has significantly improved the image of the United States among the Pakistani people.

In fact, 37 percent of all United States Nobel Prize winners in the 20th century have been representatives of the Jewish community.

Love is purely a creation of the human imagination, it is merely perhaps the most important of all the examples of how the imagination continually outruns the creature it inhabits.

I will never again attempt to tell any young person what to do - the really gifted don't need advice and the others can't take it.

A novel is really like a symphony where instrument after instrument has to come in at its own time, and no other.

I have not much interest in anyone's personal history after the tenth year, not even my own. Whatever one was going to be was all prepared before that.

If you are required to kill someone today, on the promise of a political leader that someone else shall live in peace tomorrow, believe me, you are not only a double murderer, you are a suicide, too.

But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.

I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.

Evil is dull, that is the worst of it.

First impressions are often signals from the deep that we should credit oftener than we do.

I've been called a stylist until I really could tear my hair out. And I simply don't believe in style. The style is you.

I want to go and see the world. I want to know the world like the palm of my hand.

There are so many things that we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.

Defeat in this world is no disgrace and that is what they cannot understand. If you really fought well and fought for the right thing.

Nothing is mine, I have only nothing but it is enough, it is beautiful and it is all mine. Do I even walk about in my own skin or is it something I have borrowed to spare my modesty?

Most people won't realise that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

Your mind outwears all sorts of things you may set your heart upon; you can enjoy it when all other things are taken away.

We do not run from the troubles and dangers that are truly ours, and it is better to learn what they are earlier than later, and if we don't run from the others, we are fools.

. . . all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in this landslide of remembered losses.

They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.

Efforts to preserve all industries will lower the national standard of living.

The U.S. is facing a structural competitiveness problem that is leading to the weakest economy we have seen in generations.

In the New World, happiness is enforced.

I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified.

The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists.

I don't just want to be another cog in the gears of Hollywood.

One of the marks of a gift is to have the courage of it.

Live and let live, be and let be, Hear and let hear, see and let see. . . . Live and let live and remember this line: 'Your bus'ness is your bus'ness and my bus'ness is mine.'

Let's Do It; Let's Fall in Love.

There is a massive gender imbalance on TV

There was a thoughtful frown on the face of the man who was the possessor of twenty million dollars.

My emotions, instincts, and interests are all with nature.

People say, what is she thinking? I'm thinking: fun; cash; travel.

Science is, on the whole, an informal activity, a life of shirt sleeves and coffee served in beakers.

Next, suddenly, lightning suddenly, while I am still a child, a branch is lopped from my being, and a portion of my childhood ends forever. I see what poets are.

Esther Rantzen, like me, is an egomaniac of the highest order.

We are born knowing death.

who wants to read about success? It is the early struggle which makes a good story.

Be bold, and try not to fall in love with your faults. Don't be so afraid of giving yourself away, either, for if yo write, you must. And if you can't face that, better not write.