It is such a great fault to talk too much that, in business and conversation, if what is good is also brief, it is doubly good, and one gains by brevity what one often loses by an excess of words.

Pettiness of mind, ignorance and presumption are the cause of stubbornness, because stubborn people only want to believe what they themselves can imagine, and they can imagine very few things.

To be too dissatisfied with ourselves is a weakness. To be too satisfied with ourselves is a stupidity.

It is a singular characteristic of love that we cannot hide it where it exists, or pretend it where it does not exist.

We prefer people who are trying to imitate us more than those who are trying to equal us. This is because imitation is a sign of esteem, but the desire to equal others is a sign of envy.

Honest and sincere acts mislead the wicked and cause them to lose their path to their own goals, because mean-spirited people usually believe that people never act without deceit.

It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways.

Sometimes we praise the way things used to be in order to blame the present, and we esteem what is no longer in order to scorn what is.

Mean-spirited mediocrities, especially those with a smattering of learning, are the most likely to be opinionated. Only strong minds know how to correct their opinions and abandon a bad position.

Even the best-natured people, if uninstructed, are always blind and uncertain. We must take pains to instruct ourselves so that ignorance makes us neither too timid nor too bold.

Criticism should awaken our attention, not inflame our anger. We should listen to, and not flee from, those who contradict us. Truth should be our cause, no matter in what manner it comes to us.

We don't need unity in theory, we need solidarity in practice.

Questioning authority doesn't make you resistant

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

Audiences can be very judgmental.

I think society, in general, is hard on women, period.

My girlfriend knows that if I'm acting weird at home to go to one of my shows to see what's on my mind.

I still dream that it was you. No matter how many times I've looked, in my dreams it's always been you who were meant to be my queen.

Because you're not thinking about existence and being, you're not really thinking at all.

I think it's very rare, as an actor, that you get to a script, or an idea of a script, and you go, "Oh, I just have to do that!" It fell into place very quickly.

One of the world’s great religions — which has more than 1.4 billion adherents — somehow sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.