Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of those ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine, or a rank poison.

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest of violence.

Derision is never so agonizing as when it pounces on the wanderings of misguided sensibility.

The cheat ambition, eager to espouse dominion, courts it with a lying show, and shines in borrowed pomp to serve a turn.

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.

Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself.

The disease and its medicine are like two factions in a besieged town; they tear one another to pieces, but both unite against their common enemy, Nature.

Nothing is so firmly than that which is least known.

Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.

An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act.

All I needed was the courage to be me. That courage took a lifetime to develop.

I find it disturbing that the media keeps referring to my marriage, since I got divorced in 1979. But the media never wants to let me forget.

There should be a connection between a man's hairstyle and what matters to him in life.

A musical film is my idea of heaven. You can pre-record, you don't have to sing live. Singing live was the bit I hated the most. I never felt like a confident singer.

I loathe and detest movies and television and don't watch any. I do not have the time.

My Advice to Young Filmmakers is This: Don't Follow Trends. Start Them!

A man must know his destiny.

Hell, I'm not saying I'm an angel, but when it came to dirty tricks I couldn't hold a candle to the Irish Mafia.

I believe the time we really look big in a child's eyes is when we go to them and apologize for our mistakes and we say, 'I was wrong. Will you forgive me?'

I'm pleased with my life, with the journey.