In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

All women are flirts, but some are restrained by shyness, and others by sense.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.

Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.

Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.

Most people know no other way of judging men's worth but by the vogue they are in, or the fortunes they have met with.

There are no accidents so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

I always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.

What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't

At this point in my life, I like the security of a job, while still having time for my young son and to pursue other creative work.

Winning and losing are both very temporary things. Having done one or the other, you move ahead. Gloating over a victory or sulking over a loss is a good way to stand still.

I've gone from being one of the youngest governors to now the longest consecutive serving governor in the country.

Often people do not properly value things that they are good at naturally because they find them too easy. That is very problematic.

There's a feeling of elation that comes after getting off stage and then there's a feeling of utter sadness that comes after getting off the stage.

People get desperate when they're backed into a corner.

But we'll stumble on, she and I, into our messy future. And we'll have each other.

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.