Successful minds work like a gimlet--to a single point.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

Our first and last love is self-love.

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

I wonder if that's how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out.I don't want it to win.

If you want money more than anything, you will be bought and sold.If you have a greed for food, you will become a loaf of bread.This is a subtle truth.Whatever you love, you are.

I am grateful to the motherland and the people. I feel honored to fly into space on behalf of hundreds of millions of female Chinese citizens.

I got put on jury duty, which is where I learned how to write.

Hospitality sometimes degenerates into profuseness, and ends in madness and folly.

Our culture now wonderfully, alchemically transforms images and history into artistic material. The possibilities seem endless and wide open.

We are not called to bring a broken planet back to its created glory. But we are to call broken people back to their creator.

Change yourself - you are in control.

The hypothesis of the supernatural and/or a supreme being is vague, unfounded, and inapplicable in any practical fashion

At Christmas, I no more desire a rose.