If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow-creature s let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.

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.

I'm swimming upstream. Fighting the tide while the happy dead drift past me to the pools of ignorance.

The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.

Golf courses are beautiful, it's good for the soul and it gets out the anger... well, if you don't care about the score then you won't have a heart attack.

There are not enough chinamen in the world to stop a fully armed Marine regiment from going where ever they want to go.

The deep root of failure in our lives is to think, 'Oh how useless and powerless I am.' It is essential to think strongly and forcefully, 'I can do it,' without boasting or fretting.

Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.

The new Disney cartoon 'Bambi' is interesting because it's the first one that's been entirely unpleasant.

Britney [Spears]'s actually kind of like a broken-down shell of a human being, that's what makes her so endearing and compelling.

We should never underestimate the great power of the way of love which reaches that spark of good in the other person, always there no matter how deeply buried, and the person is disarmed.

If it had blown up, I wouldn’t have known a thing about it.