As what we call genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonizing with it the rest of the character.

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Extreme vanity sometimes hides under the garb of ultra modesty.

Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to man; youth never.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of mind, for the moment realizes itself.

All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the safe side and the just side of a question is the generous side and the merciful side.

As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.

All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.

Nature and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love.

To reason from analogy is often dangerous, but to illustrate by a fanciful analogy is sometimes a means by which we light an idea, as it were, into the understanding of another.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.

Do good, live in the most positive and joyful way possible every day.

Veins stood out in her temples as she struggled against her silence. No one noticed. Those words had already been used up, spent, thrown out into the atmosphere to dissipate without effect.

I didn't do the typical things that young kids do.

As an actor there's no autonomy, unless you're prepared to risk the possibility of starving.

More and more, even with a measure of success, I'm not sure what it is people are seeing when they see a movie I've made.

It seems to me that the years between eighteen and twenty-eight are the hardest, psychologically .

Having a similar outlook on life is the central key for long-term sustainability in any love relationship.

If we want to deliver opportunity for all, we need an economy that delivers jobs for the future.

I'm lucky that so many children visit my website. At least I get to talk with them that way.

to hear the voice of the silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance