The drama is the looking-glass in which we see the hideousness of vice and the beauties of virtue.

I want to do everything in the world that can be done.

[On disagreeing with her husband about his slave-holding:] I cannot give my conscience into the keeping of another human being or submit the actions dictated by my conscience to their will.

What shall I do with all the days and hours That must be counted ere I see thy face? How shall I charm the interval that lowers Between this time and that sweet time of grace?

When marriage is what it ought to be, it is indeed the very happiest condition of existence.

... it's always determined characters who make the greatest fools.

An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work.

Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

I have been taking my daily walk round the island, and visited the sugar mill and the threshing mill again.

Carols of gladness ring from every tree.

They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.

I've made so many movies playing a hooker that they don't pay me in the regular way anymore. They leave it on the dresser.

You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.

Ruby, I lied before. I would have run. —CG

Constantly working outward, putting system after system inside the known universe, they were the bright hungry wave of mankind reaching out to gather in the stars.

If you've got Mystique as your girlfriend the fun you could have in bed - I've just imagined X-Men 3 might open with me in bed with Patrick Stewart.

Honey, a man can't keep his gun in a cookie jar. It just isn't done.

I'm gregarious with writers and never with manuscripts . . . I [like to] create the illusion of seamless perfection, so I alone know the flawed homely process along the way.

I usually play characters that are a lot different than me. I mean, I'm never in a fight in a movie and if I'm in them, I'm usually losing.

Bonds are made to be broken," he said. "Just like rules.

Close Dept. of Education, but don't dismantle public schools.