If a man aspires to a righteous life, his first act of abstinence if from injury to animals.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody thinks about changing himself.

Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person.

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.

Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.

The ink of a pen is simply the blood of a heart

It's as though a smile is ageless, or perhaps eternal, independent of the decay and collapse of the surrounding features.

In those years only the dead smiled, Glad to be at rest: And Leningrad city swayed like A needless appendix to its prisons.

No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it he must serve it too.

When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.

Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination ... and a little dough

Many women have earned titles, Your Grace. It doesn't seem to have been a factor in whether or not they actually received them.

A resolution to attend theatres or operas is an absolute disqualification for Holy Orders.

Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.

This January, Kevin Costner will be honored by the Palm Springs International Film Festival for his contribution to film. This gives Costner just two months to make a contribution to film.