Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.

As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

Amazingly, my impatience didn’t speed up the procession at all.

Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow.

Lips. There was something strangely, delicately indelicate about the word, like a kiss itself.

My process differs... my process for a Richard Linklater film is very different than a process for Training Day.

I don't have a cell phone (though for years I've kept saying, "soon").

The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonization of Palestine.

You just don't invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests!

A.I. poses a potential threat more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

I find that I put my body in my work when I am at a particularly difficult or joyous point because I want to feel that moment.

I thought he wanted it, anyway," I say. "Not like this," Haymitch says. "He wanted it to be real.