Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Our first and last love is self-love.

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

I have no doubt that historians will conclude that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

As late as the seventeenth century, monarchs owned so little furniture that they had to travel from palace to palace with wagon-loads of plate and bedspreads, of carpets and tapestries.

The history of modern culture is a history of popular entertainments evolving into art.

Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history of suffering.

[Michael] Gove will be the underdog fighting for the underdog in this leadership race.

Dr. King once said, "You cannot legislate goodness, and you cannot pass a law to force someone to respect you. The only way to social justice, in a capitalist country, is through economic parity."

I got fame and fortune, and I lost my sense of reasoning.

Power has for so long been a male construct that it distorted the shape of the first women who tried it on, only to find themselves in a sort of straitjacket.

The most powerful person in the world is the story teller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.