Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

You're a great man, but only when seen from afar.

Your life must not be static

Every producer in Hollywood had set me down as a type. I was both amused and disappointed.

After all, what would be "beautiful" if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: "I am ugly"?.

What I refuse to face within myself will meet me in the exterior world through you, not as you are, but as I have so construed you.

Every once in a while, magicians strike gold. David Regal has created and produced the perfect close-up illusion.

Humanism is not alive and well in Texas. Different colors and types of Texans do not like one another, nor do they pretend to.

In all the illusions, you're the only truth that I need

I had no idea that he was going to write that, but I've always believed that insecurity was what would keep you always in your innocence, no matter what the business did.

The script comes first. If that isn't good enough, you know it's gonna be a long ride.