No rose without a thorn.

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.

Between two stools one sits on the ground.

With enough 'ifs' we could put Paris in a bottle.

He who can lick can bite.

The price spoils the pleasure.

Everything passes everything wears out everything breaks.

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.

Whoever profits by the crime is guilty of it.

Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes.

It is by believing in roses that one brings them to bloom.

The streams which would otherwise diverge to fertilize a thousand meadows must be directed into one deep narrow channel before they can turn a mill.

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.

There is a kind of victory in good work, no matter how humble.

Not just as a black woman, but as a woman, since the beginning of time, beauty has been our responsibility.

Another night, I dreamed I saw my father sweeping out the barn floor clean, and would not suffer the wheat to be brought in the barn. He appeared to me to be in anger.

There was no point in doing art if you were going to be second-rate.

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.

Nothing is as important as passion.

The South is the region that history has happened to.