Offensive objects, at a proper distance, acquire even a degree of beauty.

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.

We may daily discover crowds acquire sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but very few that possess the virtues which ennoble human nature, and (in the best sense of the word) constitute a gentleman.

A statue in a garden is to be considered as one part of a scene or landscape.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.

The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

I refuse to behave fraudulently, as if I was anything else but African.

As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

I have a bad back partially from playing the drums and singing. I used to have to hold my body in such a position that my spine got out of alignment.

Success is counted sweetest / By those who ne'er succeed.

I'm not big on regret. It's not on my schedule.

You can write shorthand and still look at the guy you're talking to.

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

Abstract ideas are the patterns two or more memories have in common.

I might sing a gospel song in Arabic or do something in Hebrew. I want to mix it up and do it differently than one might imagine.