I would rather be an expert on me than on Cicero

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

Whether they did or didn't, America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008. I don't remember any terrorist attacks on American soil during that period of time.

The company in which you will improve most will be least expensive to you.

Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world.

Whoever leads an auspicious life here and governs the commonwealth rightly, as my most noble father did, who promoted all piety and banished all ignorance, has a most certain way to heaven.

I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying.

What's the trick to writing a genuinely funny comedy? The trick is therapy. Take notes.

My mother would thump me sharply on the head with a thimble or a spoon if I became too noisy with the whistle when I was playing I was a steamboat captain. She had no sense of the dignity of command.

Worst thing in the world? John is completely out of it. Good luck, ladies. He's a freak!

You have to be careful as a libertarian because you can sound very Republican.

The first quality that is needed is audacity.