The maxims of men reveal their characters.

Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something.

We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves.

The shortness of life cannot dissuade us from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains.

The young suffer less from their own errors than from the cautiousness of the old.

You are not born for fame if you don't know the value of time.

The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught.

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

Action makes more fortune than caution.

Courage is adversity's lamp.

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.

Perhaps Ali's most significant talent with the ability to transport people past thoughts and words to a world of feeling and play.

[T]here can be a form of vanity in grief that is indulged rather than suffered.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired but by controlling the desire.

We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before.

A single ear of corn in a large field is as strange as a single world in infinite space.

My mother was a barmaid and I was raised in a trailer park. I'm used to that language. I put it on the screen so that people could interpret it as they wish.

when someone you love dies, he becomes your enemy; he fights you tooth and nail from a hidden position; he successfully raids what small provisions you have gathered to keep yourself going.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

My brother Jeff is now my agent at Advantage International in Washington, D.C.

Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.