Observe people with cool eyes, listen to their words with cool ears. Confront feelings with cool emotions, reflect on principles with a cool mind.

If those who give are conscious of their own generosity and those who receive feel indebted, they are no longer family but rather strangers doing business.

There is much meaning in the word endure. For example, when dealing with unstable human feelings and uneven pathways in life, without endurance to hold you up, you may fall into a pit in the brush.

Those who have come to an impasse should examine their original intentions; those who have succeeded should note where they are heading.

To notice people's deceptions yet not reveal it in words, to bear people's insults without showing any change of attitude-there is endless meaning in this, and also endless function.

If a poor house is well kept, or a poor girl well groomed, there is elegance if not beauty. If good people should come upon hard times, why should they immediately give up on themselves?

Human affairs are like a chess game. Only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players.

Valuing unusual conduct is not as good as being careful about ordinary actions.

Attention is the mind's feet; if you do not control your attention strictly, it runs into misleading pathways.

If the mind is illumined, there is clear blue sky in a dark room. If the thoughts are muddled, there are malevolent ghosts in broad daylight.

In dealing with good people one should be magnanimous; in dealing with bad people one should be strict. In dealing with average people one should combine magnanimity and strictness.

I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

The insight to see possible new paths the courage to try them the judgment to measure results-these are the qualities of a leader.

Death's long anabasis.

I started acting when I was 13, so acting has been, with great fortune, my job since I could get a job.

What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.

It is the certainty that you are about to recover, that brings results, not the hope.

It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.

There've been a lot more people hurt on astro-turf than grass.

I was thinking one of the great things about fiction is we, as a race, only get to look out of our own eyes at the world. And fiction is a fantastic way of looking out through somebody else's eyes.

You can actually make a lot of money and do a lot of good in the world. I don't see those things as being in opposition to one another. I never have.