The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

In every step you take, keep your feet firmly on the ground.

You may spend fifty or eighty years of your life believing in something totally false, and this is what happens to most people!

Don’t sleep too much. If you sleep 3 hours less each night for a year, you will have an extra month and a half to succeed in.

If you want to know about Africa, read our literature - and not just 'Things Fall Apart,' because that would be like saying, 'I've read 'Gone with the Wind' and so I know everything about America.'

I believe that for the small numbers of Jewish people in the United States, they exercise a tremendous amount of influence on the affairs of government.

If you never budge, don't expect a push.

When I first started out, I said to myself, if this doesn't happen there will be something else that I can do. That seemed possible because I knew how to do so many different kinds of jobs.

Walk rate is probably the area in which a pitcher has the most room to improve, but a rate that high is tough to overcome.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

I grew up kissing books and bread.