Be sure to choose what you believe and why you believe it, because if you don't choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.

Sometimes people come out of school right now and they immediately want a job doing something. And there's nothing wrong with just listening and learning and watching.

It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate.

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly lies to the bone. Beauty dies and fades away, but ugly holds its own! Create and cultivate Inner Beauty that never fades away but grows and matures with Time!

When you're creating a fragrance, you're always thinking about what you want that first smell to be, that first reaction.

Nothing goes sour more easily than the life of pleasure.

The "If you build it, they will come" approach to filmmaking has always been helpful to me.

When philosophers try to understand consciousness, much of what they claim is not conceptual analysis at all, though it may be shopped under that description.

It's been my belief that learning how to do something in your hometown is the most important thing.

There's no longer a monolithic evil empire somewhere, spreading a different philosophy of life. That doesn't exist.